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\.\M\i:i!SAi;V DISCOURSE 



ill !■ DKI iiKK TIIK 



St. Nicholas Sorictn of itlanhaitan, 



DECEMBER 



I Bret eettl nt of thie 8tate coincided with iti oataral advantajree. WblU Ef l iih— 

BUM to America either fljrii or pu ratting thi 

- Outcome lepired bj the »piril of trade, Ineli down on 

\. i, boldl) penetrated to the be id Derivation of the II I 

l ,i family, » - 
■ ibioel I thr I • 'I ili" hlicrtt nf \ II 

J the Indepei nmerco, wo warn rocked in 

principle! of liberty with our iuutlicr'« milk." — Gortrntur 

- 



BY C. F. UOPFJI IK 




xcrtn QQftl . 

\i ■< i|,'l> AND SW< EtDS, 1 I • BR( »AI>\\ 'AY 



I I 



TRINTKD BY JOHN K. Jl'oOWK, 

106 Fulton-sfreet. 









I'll E Mm\ eers of m:w-\ <»kk 



Mi:. ! r runl Brethr* :: of the St. Nichol I 

on of this anniversary of the revival of <>ur 
vival which first brought 
! fellowship, to liuiic.r the memory and keep alive the 
traditions of the early j >i> >t n • w-York <>l every r 

I will not emulate the learned Diedrich Knicl . by 

commencing this discourse with a history of th the world, 

as forming a proper ; chapter to the nunc important 

annals of Manhattan, 1> tl like him, I musl resort t.> 

f Sanchoniatl tho and Berosus, for the pi 

monious introduction of my theme. 
Among the countl ibian fiction, tl 

•I travellin spirit tourist, who, wandering 

about from plain t to pi ild alwaj I of a 

. lonk in iijion our <ub as it weir, and rest hia winga 
alar spot, upon which be invariable 
alighted. 

:, it would seem, when • ■ 1 it. 

\vn with r i r i > . and one lonely 

e<] am ! th .pant. 

" Art thou 1 1 

replied the " I but wand 

hither like thyself — man ,/»/•<"< not here — man never hath dwelt 

and the sullen hunt 
moro lonely ah 



A thousand years went by — again the angel stood upon the 
earth ! 

He saw the eternal hills around, the same. But the leafy 
plain which they had encircled, how looked it now? 

Mosques — domes — minarets, the sanctuaries of the faithful, the 
abodes of a million of worshippers, reflected the sunshine from 
their white parapets. The streets swarmed with life. The rich 
bazaars, the marble palaces and frequent fountains, proclaimed 
centuries of busy toil, of successful industry, of present abounding 
luxury. " This noble and flourishing city ! How long hath it 
stood here 1 " asked the angel of one of its thronged multitude. 

" Knowest thou not the diadem city of the earth 1 ?" responded 
the inhabitant. ** This city ! It was always thus magnificent ! 
Alia alone can tell when first its mosques were reared by the 
Faithful." 

Another thousand years have passed away — the angel is again 
there. He stands upon the shrubless and barren borders of a lake 
where fishermen are drawing their nets, and he calls to them from 
the shore — 

" Friends ! where is the ancient city which once reposed amid 
these hills 1" 

The fishermen shake their heads : they have never heard of it. 
Their fathers have fished for many generations in that lake, which 
always washed the base of the surrounding hills as now ! 

The legend goes on to relate that the spirit traveller returned 
twice or thrice yet again at the same intervals of time. Where he 
looked for the lake on his next visit, he found a meadowy pasture ! 

The herdsmen tending the flocks that were scattered over it, 
laughed at his tradition of the sandy shored lake ; and turning up 
the rich black soil with their staves, averred that those grassy fields 
had ever been the same as now. 

On his final visit the angel found a still more novel aspect on 
the scene. The very mountains which once girdled it had sunk 
into the earth, and yielded their place to two broad arms of the 
sea, which now encircled that legendary spot in their embrace. 
The turfy savannah, for which he looked, was now broken up into 



hill and dale, laced l>y pebbled bi 

1>Y deep artificial excavations. I ind mountain* 

e,iit plain bad beoome w island. I 

shrubs, growing here there upon pinnacles < tichhadi 

thrown down from bills that bad crumbled loo • 
up l>y bidden energies of the earth beneath. But m 
therai intervals between thom. In the m 
situations the labor <>f man bad so far subdued the ungeni > 
that many a garden and orchard relieved and diversified that 
island; over which from the sea-ward • ■ x t r • • 1 1 s 1 • 
to 1m- growing even while the an ■. growing up from the 

very bosom of the bitter and brackish - nergies of 

old Ocean him i lifting it from his foam, and pushing it as 

it expanded, still farther ami farther landward ! 

This, (quoth the angel,) must be an intelligent who 

make so thrifty a use of this forbidding soil — this must be a ]>•_?< »jiIo 

bighly favored by a god-like intelligence, whom tin- powers 

ture thus combine t<> favor in rearing their fast growing city. 

And he asked one of the dwellers, "where are the ancient i 
that once flourished hei i 

'• This is anew land," was thr reply. " It has been a wilde: 

in — i . K-L-n nntrod by civilized man till m came to 

I reclaim it." 

•■ Well then (said the inquisitive spirit,) this noble city, who 

I 1 it from the wav> 

" We did — we Pilgrims <>f Plymouth Rock," cried 

half a dozen voices in the highest Puritan key. 

•• Why, my B iends, (said the angel, speaking now with som< tl 

'. !i accent,) even while I lit | upon tliis moiling 

multitude, gMed through the two centuries, wbicb are to me hut 

is ;i moment of time, I have seen three races of men succeeding 
each other in power here, and all of them preceded you on the 

spot win I to tell me." 

And luch is ' — Such, in the moral world d 

arouv contrasts, the inc • in human 

•lit and action, that although upon our continent, we hv. 



in Uxmal and Palenque, some approach to the physical realization 
of the Arabian fable, it shadows forth but too truly the mind of 
man. The alternate mental feebleness and proud intellectual 
achievement of our race, its darling love of existing idols, its 
arrogant reliance upon the Present, its childlike forgetfulness or 
stupid and dotard oblivion of the Past. Its again re-nascent 
energies and its insolent confidence that the youth thus once more 
re-invigorated, though rocked on the graves of countless civilizations, 
sli all preserve its fresh enlightenment for ever. 

Such is history ! Alas ! too often such especially is American 
history. Such, above all, is the history of the State in which we 
live — a growing empire of more than two centuries, with a story 
only of yesterday. 

The predominance of the English race in the ultimate settlement 
of these United States, has made us but too ready to forget the 
claims of other nations (which are likewise represented in its 
present population) to the honor of exploring and planting it. 

Without diminishing the glory of Cabot in maritime exploration, 
to the navigators of Holland is due the credit of first carefully 
surveying our whole Atlantic coast, and minutely mapping that part 
of it from Cape Cod to Henlopen. To the French, that of making 
known our vast inland waters, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to 
the lideless wave of Lake Superior, the savage torrent of the 
Missouri, and the far winding current of the Mississippi. 

The nautical enterprize and the abundant maritime resources 
of the Dutch, whose navy (according to Sir Walter Raleigh) 
numbered ten ships to one for that of England,* gave them pre- 
eminent advantages over all other nations in examining the indented 
coast of the whole Atlantic sea-board of America, and selecting 
the most elegible points for such colonies as they chose to plant; 
while the topographical science of the French, (whose skill in 

* At a later day one Dutch commercial establishment alone, without the aid 
of the Provincial or Federal government of the United Provinces, " could equip a 
fleet of fifty sail of the line without building a single vessel." [Basnage in the 
Universal History.] Dutch words still supply half the technical terms used on 
shipboard. 



engim 

pupils of Vauban,] fitted them for th< 

imroated with bo roach skill upon thi> Northen I 
Tin' very points which the latt. i I formilil 

• wo hundred yi 
tnw ( of the AJIeghanies. 

■. Pittsbui . I :ili-l 

us, have all fulfilled the destiny that 
them when designated l>y t' ! 
of the in which they are Bitu 

Nor have our pu ion chroniclei 

with Blurting over the all-important part which 
Europeans bad alike in planting this vast empire, and in dev< 

But with regard to thi rticularly, 

in their w ilemn history, in their school books, in their 

public lectures, and in their anniversary addresses, they, in the 
blind pursuit of an unmeaning theory, seem to aim with sin 
industry arid a most perverted ability, to obliterate the peculiai 
New-York, and joint on to New-England, her eldei 
provincial Bister here, as a modern colony of Massachusetts Bay! 
A most eir.niei.iis and offeni imption, which is 

into the minds of the multitude 
I truth. And while the Massachusetts-man, the Virginian and 
South Carolinian, are still identified with their fathers, in both 
private and historic ■ itionj New-Yi rtizan 

writings of the annalist an.l in the habitual mention of the 

fnized as li i'. i a territorial 

t.. the revolution. I .' it phrai 

has become perfectly <1 »m< in the 

public le< is of this city ; and no one thinks of 

" the 
i Both the 

nioro than on. e, of i . been n-rd in our 

I.. lalure, to add force to some doctrinal appeal. And if the 
inquiring spirit of tin- apologue makes h 

rmerly, he will tin. 1 not a recognition remainii 



8 

the ten generations of pioneering energy of which this State was 
the scene before the Puritan interpreter of history was abroad. 

It should be remembered, that while modern New- York is so 
much indebted to the healthful current of New England immigration, 
which poured in immediately after the revolution, her ancient story, 
which new associations are so fast obliterating, is characteristically 
her own. Her own at least from the landing of Hendrick Hudson 
in 1609, to her first act of revolution in seizing the stamped paper of 
the British crown in 1766. And while it might be in very ques- 
tionable taste to carp at or arraign the natural associations of those 
who compose, if not the largest, yet perhaps the most intelligent, 
and possibly the most valuable portion of our fellow citizens through- 
out the State generally, yet this covering up and obliteration of her 
ancient story is not altogether well ! New- York, though she had 
no Speedwell nor Mayflower freighted with precious hearts, daring 
the wilderness for conscience's sake — New- York was still planted, 
and earlier planted, by men as bold to confront the perils of a new 
climate or the horrors of savage warfare, as those who landed at 
Plymouth — by men, too, who penetrated beyond the mountains, 
and established their little colonies a hundred and fifty miles from 
the sea-shore, without thinking that they did any thing extraordinary 
enough to transmit their names to posterity.* Why is it that we 

" Schenectady was commenced shortly after Christiause planted a colony at 
Fort Orange, acting under the edict of 1614." (Dunlap.) Individual enterprize 
having thus started the colony on the Hudson, and those individuals having 
established four colonial stations, one at Manhattan, one at the head of ship 
navigation, one at the head of tide water, and one on the Mohawk, all prior to 
1618, and each of which is at this moment a populous town; the date of the 
actual settlement of the Hudson cannot be arbitrarily postponed to the subsequent 
periods of their chartered settlements, under specific corporations. If the colonies 
planted under the edict of 1614, be set aside for the further acts of colonization, 
which took place under the incorporations and charters of 1691, 1623, 1629, or 
1645, in order to place us here after the Puritans, we ought by the same reasoning 
to assume a much later and still more striking era of the colonization of New- York, 
as the great landmark of our history. That landmark, which most definitely severs 
us from New-England as being no Puritan province of hers, is the English planting 
of this colony by the cavaliers of Charles II. time, when the Duke of York took 



10 much of •' the P I 

i on the iog of tins continent ' Why is it 1 1 1 

tick inwardly to 
>ng vit il the head 

tide-* 

of England on • levoted H recoiled 

' 
tride from luxurious France to this th< 

toiling from Puritan i 
with the same determined spirit as did tho II 
Papal bigotry, came hither with little but cloak and rapier, to 

oat their fortunes amid the I N forkl Whj 

that we bear so seldom of tins t ri : : I bio id, which blei 

for two hundred years on the soil of New- York, now fl 
veins of her native-born children, and bred a crop ol 
will mate with the " Puritan Anglo Saxon" ii 
l"n ; .. 

It is becauf '■' St. Nicholas i long 

of your fathers I Too coldly fostered, i 
. the efforts of your own sons ot of strangers, 
to illustrate it. It is because too many of the modern childn 
New- York, looking back for ever, like the patri ife, to 

i they have left, offer but petrified affections tot! 
memories and that State pride \ you yoi trt n 

■ 
In those old colonial days, when the now popular 

. do! been brosched, aid 
closet or the b eeder's stable, the chane 
who visited the banks of the H I on and Mohawk, observed the 
.• fusion of national prejudices, and the •• and 

uniformity h prevails 

the different European which thai noble valley was 

■ i 
■ 



• prevailing 
. : . the feet leave 
to the cause. We 

.1 frequent 
illuded to : we may 
rs of New- 
secure 
Bits ical truths ; 

nature of their favorite 
■ - manners, ol many a si 

ckers danced round 

e, while the Puritan Anglo-Saxons 

in which ever direction we look. 

. that the planters of this Hollander 

— -: >this Huguenot asylum, the cavalier 

5 to this I Wood flows in 

. the ereoles of 
- . we cheerfully 

tal stock of America, on the 

Aag 5 Puritan descent. 

si § of European origin; no hereditary right 

isl tcracy of race which shall place 

.'. planters of these United 5 

f them all. We have no rivalship with the 

d of ancient Virginia, or the English Puritan 

. the Roman Catholic who planted 

the Swedish Lutheran of the gallant little 

are. 

We claim only that the spirit which characterized the pioneers 

- her own, and that it was borrowed from no other 

That her ancient political history is her own. 

t an escresence upon those of any other province. That her 

is, and liberties spring from her own people — 

; their wisdom — matured by their experience. 

efended by their valor. We claim that the glory of the land. 

.. men love to call the " The Empire State," has its well 



11 

springs in the hearts of these our progenitors. We regard their 
councils and their deeds as a sacred bequest to memory, with all 
who now enjoy the fruit of the tree which they planted. And we 
take pleasure in believing, that not only their immediate descendants, 
but every true son of New-York, to what ever pari of Europe or 
America he may care to trace his extraction, is unwilling that the 
fathers of this State should ha , 'in tradition — 

is unwilling that the peculiar story of this ancient colony should be 
merged in other associations, and superseded by the encroaching 
annals of any sister State; superseded here at least, amid the very 
graves of the men who fashioned that home in the wilderness, which 
we live to enjoy a metropolis of luxury. 

Our object to-night then is not a scholastic examination of the 
early annals of New- York, but a discursive recurrence to a few 
characteristic passages for the sake of freshening old sympathies, 
and brightening the chain of memories which link us to the fathers 
of Manhattan. 

In the first place, however, I must attempt to meet a statement 
made by a learned gentleman, when last year addressing a lar^e, 
enlightened, and influential association of descendants of the 
Puritans, from the spot where I now stand. This learned gentle- 
man, eminent in New-England letters, representing the Puritanic 
stock on that occasion, proclaimed to his brethren of the New- 
England Society here in New-York, and through them to the 
New-York public, that " although some few settlements and 
attempts at settlement might h ave been previously made in America 
yet on the 22nd of December, 1C20, when the Pilgrims of the 
Mayflower landed at Plymouth, ought to be dated the actual 
opbning of this continent." He likewise was understood to ascribe 
the introduction of "freedom, religion, and civilization," exclu 
to the same Puritanic origin. 

Similar views appear to me to characterize the whole spirit of 
Bancroft's brilliant History of the United States, a work whose 
glowing eloquence and varied ability his secured a wide-spread 
popularity, which is fast making it the standard authority of the 
country. Should these views finally prevail in our higher literature, 



12 

as they already do in our school books, (written almost exclusively 
by New-England men,) some of the most interesting and valuable 
lessons in the philosophy of society, will be lost to those who come 
after us. I allude to the peculiar and diverse experience of each 
individual State of the confederacy, in the development of its moral 
resources and its progress toward a higher civilization. I would 
have other States of the old thirteen speak for themselves in this 
matter. As for my own State, unless I much misconceive the 
character of the people — The Knickerbocker State, notwithstanding 
the ceaseless iteration of Puritanic assumption in pulpits and 
lecture rooms throughout her borders, is not yet prepared to 
accept the neighborly interpretation of American history, which 
sinks her, next to Virginia, the proudest* of the original " old 
thirteeners," into the condition of the province of a province ! Nor 
do I think that it will be difficult to show, that however early the 
Puritanic school-master may have been abroad here, and however 
New-York may alway have welcomed the representatives of his 
intelligent and enei'getic race, as, in her eclectic spirit, she has 
ever welcomed the enterprize of every land and every language, 
she is still not Puritanic in her origin, her progress, or her character ; 
in other words, that tested by her theory, and her practice of " settle- 
ment," and "freedom," and "religion," and "civilization," her 
story is her own just as much as is that of Virginia the peculiar 
property of "the old Dominion." 

Before attempting to meet the question in both its physical 
and its moral aspect, as I shall attempt to do, I will, in order to 
acquit our neighbors of singular arrogance, so far as I can, attempt 
to point out the error upon which their encroachment upon our 
State pride is founded. 

* The proudest at least at that time, when New Plymouth, the genuine Pilgrim 
colony, to which it is now proposed to annex us, through Massachusetts, seemed 
about to be annexed to New- York instead of to Massachusetts Bay. Hear old 
Hutchinson. 

" I dare say there is not a man in the colony of Plymouth at this day, who 
does not think it a most happy circumstance, that they were annexed to Massa- 
chusetts instead of to New- York." — Hutchinson's Appendix. 



13 

As regards priority of settlement then, it is well known thai 
England, at an early day, claimed this province as a part of 
Virginia, and claimed it also on the ground, that Hendrick Hudson, 
though sailing under the flag of Holland when he discovered the 
river which bears his name, was an Englishman. This claim of 
priority of possession was the subject of bitter controversy between 
England and Holland long after the foundations of New- York were 
"laid by the latter; and the Puritans, in their desire " to enlarge his 
Majesty's dominions, and live under their natural Prince,""* took 
as active a part then, as some of them do now, to prove that New- 
York was old England's, and therefore of right belonged to New- 
England. When the cavaliers came in here to rule the province 
in the name of the Duke of York, the English side of the question 
seemed to be settled, though most assuredly no one then dreamed 
that it was settled in favor of English Puritans; in reference to 
whom the whole claim is now made, giving us a second-hand 
origin. 

The opposing races of that day have since blended here, and 
the question now is, not one of English or Dutch rivalship, but of 
the early settlement of an American State. 

That is the question in its physical aspect. 

As regards its moral aspect — that of the independent growth of 
New- York upon its own ideas of "freedom, religion, and civiliza- 
tion," and not upon ideas borrowed at second-hand from the 
Puritans, I will attempt similarly to acquit our Eastern friends 
here of encroachment, by venturing to interpret what I conceive 
to be their views upon the subject. 

Founded by the earnest sect of the Brownists, as the asylum 
for theirjpeculiar faith ,t one of the earliest acts of the Puritans of 
New-England was to make the most sedulous provision for educa- , 
tion, and the gradual training of a homogeneous caste of people to 
faith, doctrine, and opinion. The Church and the Lyceum, or 

* Morton's New-England Memorial. 

t " When they first went to Holland they were known by the name of Brownists 
* * *. The plan they set out upon was not to make a great colony in a little time, 
but to preserve a pure and distinct congregation." — Hutchinson. 



14 

rather, their Church and their Lyceum, embodied the Puritans' 
first ideas of the settlement of a new country, and many of their 
descendants are unwilling to recognize any other evidence of 
"freedom, religion, and civilization," as associated with the word 
«' settlement." 

Now, as it happens, New- York, unfortunately for her claims 
by such a test, took exactly opposite ideas from the start, and 
perversely maintains them to the present day. The asylum of 
every sect, and eschewing alike the conventicle and the lecture-room, 
as a basis of civilization, she made the hearth-stone of home the 
foundation of good citizenship ; and without any reference to identity 
of doctrine or homogeneous origin, demanding only residence and 
loyalty to the province from her cosmopolite colonists, she took 
commerce as her great liberalizer; took it not accidentally, nor 
with an indirect and incidental view, but clearly and definitely; 
she explored every river, inlet, and harbor, and made a reconnois- 
ance of the interior, and established upon her coasts and inland 
waters, not " a few trading posts," but a whole system of " castles," 
as the "stations" of the Western settler were then, and are still 
called in the language of this State. 

How far the policy of New-York and her theory and practice of 
"settlement" may have fostered "freedom, religion, and civiliza- 
tion" within her borders, I may perhaps attempt to show hereafter. 

Let us now revert to the historic records which Mr. Brodhead's 
researches in Europe have recently made the property of this State. 

On Saturday the 11th of October, 1614, five years after 
Hendrick Hudson, in a vessel of eighty tons burthen, had sailed 
up to the head of tide-water on the river which bears his name, 
there appeared before a meeting of the States-General convened at 
the Hague, the deputies of the United Company of Merchants of 
The United Provinces. They stated, that at great expense and 
heavy damage to themselves, arising from the loss of vessels during 
the last year, they had with five ships, owned by them, discovered 
and explored certain new lands in America between New France 
and Virginia, which they called New Netherland. They at the 
same time presented a map of the newly discovered country. 



15 

This, (says Mr. Brodhead,) marks the first official recognition 
of the existence of New Netherland; its name occurs fjr the first 
time in the grant which was made to these merchants to plant here 
a colony. Of the ships engaged in the exploration, which first 
gave a map of our coast to the world, one was commanded by 
John De Witt, another by Adrian Block, a third by Cornelius 
May. An island in the Hudson river long bore the name of the 
first of these gallant sailors, and " Block Island " and " Cape May " 
to this day tell us 'who were the hardy mariners that first explored 
them. 

The two remaining vessels were severally commanded by 
Captains Volkertsen and Christiansen. The name of the former 
has not yet appeared in our annals, but Hendrick Christiansen, 
(De Laet tells us,) was the first commandant of the first fort erected 
on Manhattan Island in 1614, and in the same year two other forts 
were built on the Hudson; one at Esopus and one at the head of 
navigation near Albany. Six years later, and in the same year 
that the Puritans touched the rim of the coast at Plymouth, the 
advanced station of the commercial settlement of this province was 
on the Mohawk at Schenectady.* 

Let me now quote a passage from our historical collections, 
which sets forth in a still more striking light, the union of com- 
mercial enterprise and maritime science in these worthy prede- 
cessors of our present gallant race of New-York ship-masters; and 
let me invite your special attention to this fact, that within two 

" 1616 vers cette annce les Hollandais etablirent le village d'Esopus, qui prit 
ensuit le nom do Kingston. 1620 establissment, par les memes colonistes du village 
de Schenectady sur la riviere de Mohawk a 15 milles et demi d' Albany." — L 'Art 
de verifier les Dales. See Stuyvcsant's indignant protest (of August, 1664,) 
against the base surprisal and seizure of New-York by the English in a time of 
profound peace, in which he thus marks the date of settlement. " The Dutch 
came not into these provinces by any violence, but by virtue of a commission, by 
the States-General in 1614, when they settled the North River near Fort Orange ! 

Dr. Laet, in mentioning the administration of Christeausen and Elkens prior to 
the existence of the West India Company and the chartered government, they 
established here, under a director general, at a later period says, Ita nostri ab anno 
clcioc xiv. ad aliquot succe«dentes tcnuerimt. — Nov. Orb. 



16 

years from the establishment of those trading stations at the head 
of the Hudson navigation, a thorough coast survey was attempted 
in a vessel built here in New Netherland, and launched first upon 
our waters. Here is the record. 

On the 18th of August, 1616, Captain Cornelius Hendrickson, 
of Monichenden, in Holland, appeared before a meeting of the 
States-General, in behalf of the directors of New Netherland, 
situated in America, " between New France and Virginia, and 
extending from 40 to 45 degrees of North latitude," and made a 
report of his having discovered and explored certain lands, a bay, 
and three rivers, situated between 38 and 40 degrees of latitude, 
in a small yacht of 16 tons burthen, named the " Onrust," (Restless,) 
which had been built there. He also presented to the States- 
General a descriptive map of the countries he had discovered 
and explored. This map is drawn on parchment, about two feet 
long and eighteen inches wide, and is executed in the most 
elegant style of art. It shows, very accurately, (says Mr. Brod- 
head,) the situation of the coast from Nova Scotia to the Capes of 
Virginia, and the discoveries then made in Long Island Sound, 
and in the neighborhood of Manhattan. A fac-simile of this map 
is now in the office of the Secretary of State at Albany. And the 
register of the first vessel of which we have any account, built and 
belonging to the port of New-York, should never be forgotten by 
any true tarpaulin that sails from our harbor. The Indian term 
Manhattanuk, meaning, " the people of the whirlpool,"* has been 
thought still whimsically significant of our present municipal char- 
acter, but still more prophetic is the name of the first vessel built 
by white men in this State, 230 years ago. Yes, " the Restless " 
was the pioneer craft of this fevered metropolis, whose eager 
commerce now " pushes its wharves into the sea, blocks up the 
wide rivers with its fleets, and, sending its ships, the pride of 
naval architecture, to every clime, defies every wind, outstrides 
every tempest, and invades every zone."f 

* Schoolcraft. 

t Bancroft, as quoted by Brodhead, in this connection. — DUcoursc before the 
New-York Historical Society. 



The fur trade, the early nursery of tlie hardihood of New 
Netherland, and her favorite sphere of adventure, long after she 
passed to the British rule, was now boldly entered upon and 
prosecuted for a while with singular success. In 1620, as we 
have already said, a trading station was erected at Schenectady, 
and two yeai's after the landing of the Mayflower, when Morton 
arrived in New England in 1622, he tells us that the colonists of 
the Hudson had already exported the worth of twenty thousand 
pounds sterling from the forests of New-York. The advanced 
post on the Mohawk brought the colonists in contact with the 
nearest of the confederated cantons of the Iroquois ; and then began 
that league with this singular republic of the Red Man, which 
endured till the acts of England in the Revolution first arrayed 
the Iroquois against the patriot citizens of New-York, who took 
up arms in the war of Independence. 

The whole imports from 1621 to 1627, were valued at forty- 
six thousand dollars, while the exports exceeded sixty-eight thou- 
sand dollars.* 

Three years afterwards, (1630,) the condition of the settlements 
on the Hudson are described by a cotemporary English writer as 
" knowne to subsist in a comfortable manner, and to promise fairlie 
both to the State and the undertakers. Tlie cause is evident : — 
the men whom they carrie, though they be not many, are well 
chosen and known to be useful and serviceable ; and they second 
them with seasonable and fit supplies, cherishing them as carefully 
as their own families, and employing them in profitable labors that 
are knowne to be of speciall use to their comfortable subsistence."t 
And in 1632 Captain Mason of New Plymouth writes to the 
English Secretary of State, that " the Dutch on the river of Man- 
ahatta have built shippes there, whereof one was sent into Holland 
of 600 tons or thereabouts ; and have made sundry good returns 
of commodities from theme into Holland. Especially this year 
have they returned fifteen thousand beaver skins, besides other 
articles."| 

* Moulton's " Novum Belgium." t See Planter's Plea, London, 1630. 

t Brodhead's London Doc. 
2 



18 

In 1638 the trade as well as the cultivation of the soil of New 
Netherland was by the formal act of the States-General, thrown 
open to every person whether denizen or foreigner.* 

From this period, although still but a hamlet, dates that cosmo- 
politan character which soon marked the future metropolis of the 
Union, more decidedly even at that early day, that it did more 
populous neighborhoods. The colony often languished from the 
inefficiency of its rulers; but that very imbecility of rule left the 
character of the people to develope through their own individual 
enterprise; and while all strangers were welcome among them, 
the New-Yorkers of that day asked nothing from the new comer 
save that he should show he was identified with " this country," as 
they already began to term their province, by accepting a grant of 
land, and laying a hearth-stone with the rest. Their whole idea of 
homogenousness, of clanship, of conservatism, seemed based upon 
the notion of each denizen having a homestead of his own. Their 
ingenious modification of the feudatory spirit, transferred to the 
State the homage and loyalty which pure feudalism gave to the 
prince or the baron ; and this, as I shall show hereafter, was the 
intended correction of any abuse of the cosmopolitan spirit induced 
by their theory of citizenship — a theory as different from that of 
the English as is the bond of marriage from the filial tie. 

Learning, meanwhile, which already began to flourish in NeW- 
England, was sadly neglected in New- York, as literature is now ; 
while commerce, as now, was the one idea of the Knickerbockers 
as much as a peculiar Church had bee/i the one idea of the veritable 
Pilgrims. Now, which of these ideas was first established here 1 
which of these ideas has been most steadily carried out up to the 
present moment 1 

Why they whose literature now gives law to the mind of so 
many American communities, brought over with them the doctrines 
of the Dutch Armenius, stowed away in the hold of the Mayflower 
to puzzle their own minds ; the home inheritors of their peculiar 
Church and College privileges, are now the first to embrace the 

• O'Callaghan. 



19 

questionings of every new dogma, and impinge it with Puritanic 
intolerance upon others ; while the two noblest edifices upon the 
continent, consecrated to the Faith of the original Pilgrims, are 
now reared beneath the wing of Commerce&n the " New Netherland " 
islands of Manhattan and Nassau.* 

The early civil privileges of New- York offer indeed a 
most interesting field of inquiry. The political question of " Na- 
livism" as it is called, (which was broad, generous, and republican, 
as compared with the question now pressing upon us; that of the 
Puritan Anglo-Saxon, or any other foreign race claiming to be the 
chief representatives and only interpreters of the genius of our 
institutions,) finds no support in the early doctrines of New- York; 
though the spirit which influenced some of the upholders of 
nativism is deeply ingrained in her unwritten constitution. That 
spirit, while freely recognizing to the uttermost the cosmopolitan 
principle already indicated, sedulously guarded against its abuse 
by exacting from all new comers the most solemn and comprehen- 
sive oath of allegiance to the commonwealth here. Like the 
marriage rite in some schools of faith, this allegiance carried with it 
the sanction of a sacrament, in the modified feudal views of that 
day. It was an allegiance, not to doctrine nor opinion, which 
seems to be the existing theory of citizenship among some of our 
wise politicians, but to the State itself; whose loyal liegeman each 
foreign candidate for citizenship became, as the first condition of 
that political marriage which was intended wholly to supersede the 
filial tie of " Father-land." 

Many were the New Englanders, as I shall hereafter show, 
who, seeking for " a fair field and no favoi-," availed themselves of 
this broad but clearly defined platform, to rise to consideration in 
New- York; many who never dreamed that the condition of loyalty 
to the pride and dignity of the commonwealth under which they 
won preferment here, would be set aside by their modern country- 
men in order to prove that New-York was a province of New 
England. 

» The " Church of the Puritans " on Union Square, and the " Church of the 
Pilgrims " on Brooklyn Heights. 



20 

We must now — in order to see how far the rights of a freeman 
were guarantied to her citizens, at the very inception of the 
political history of the State — we must now briefly revert to the 
country whence came her*first pioneers of marry races and every 
religious persuasion. 

" No part of Europe contains half the number of beautiful 
cities, towns, and villages, all distinguished by an air of neatness 
peculiar to Holland * * *. The civil wars in France, the troubles in 
Germany, and the religious persecutions every where, crowded 
the pi'ovinces with ingenious mechanics and artists; because here 
they might practise the dictates of conscience, and enjoy the fruits 
of industry in security and repose. New manufactories were every 
day erected, and trades too big for individuals," were conducted to 
advantage by joint-stocks. During a bloody contest that continued 
for forty years, the republic attained the highest pitch of grandeur 
— the freedom of the press was thorough and universal — and not- 
withstanding the magistrates were themselves the subjects of the 
keenest pasquinades, they opposed every proposition to shackle it 
* * *. The oaigpawle composed the body of the people, but Jews, 
Mahomedans, Armenians, and Brownists, were permitted the free 
exercise of their religion * * * a sedulous regard to freedom appears 
in every part of their constitution. This Republic of Holland, 
composed of seven provinces, each enjoying its own independent 
privileges, the State may be termed a confederacy, united by one 
common interest. The seven provinces are all separate republics, 
acknowledging no authority, subordinate to no other power save 
that vested in their particular States. Even the provinces them- 
selves are divided into smaller republics, [our present township 
and district system.] Every city possesses certain sovereign privi. 
leges. Her provincial States cannot seize an offender, pardon a 
crime, or frame laws within the jurisdiction of a city. Every thing 
relative to itself and unconnected with the rest of the province, is 
transacted by its own magistrates. * * * The union of the seven 
provinces maybe compared to the union of several princes, formed 
for their mutual security, repose, and defence. Each preserves 
his own sovereignty, while he enters upon certain engagements 



21 

peculiar to the confederacy. * * * The government favors no curious 
inquiry into the faith of any man. * * At Amsterdam every sect 
known in Europe, almost in the world, hath its public meetings; 
all are citizens associated by the bonds of society and government, 
under the important protection of indifferent laws, with equal 
encouragement of arts, industry, and genius, and equal freedom 
of sentiment, speculation, and inquiry."* 

Such was the European Republic from which came the pioneers 
of New- York ; in the heart of which State already existed the only 
aboriginal Republic known among the Red Race of this continent. 
An aboriginal Republic, which, by Cadwallader Colden, writing 
one hundred years ago, is most curiously assimilated to the Re- 
public of Holland; the accomplished tory writer never dreaming 
the while, he was proving that a pure Republican system, whether 
imported or indigenous, seemed intended by Providence to stamp 
the genius of our institutions from the first.! 

* Sir William Temple, Basnage, and others, quoted in the " Universal History," 
vol. xi. fol. ed. London, 1762. This work, so favorably mentioned by Dr. Johnson 
is Clarke's favorite authority in his Commentaries on the Bible. 

t The parallel drawn by Colden is worth quoting in this connection: 

" This five nations, (the Iroquois of New-York,) consist of so many tribes or 
nations joined together by a league or confederacy, like The United Provinces 
(of Holland,) and without any superiority of one over the other. This union has 
continued so long, that the Christians know nothing of the original of it. The 
people of it are known by the English names of Mohawks, Oneydoes, Onandagoes, 
Cayugas, and Senekas. Each of these nations is again divided into three tribes or 
families, who distinguish themselves by three different arms or ensigns, and the 
sachems put this ensign or mark of their family to every public paper when they 
sign it. Each of these nations is an absolute republic by itself, and every castle 
in each nation makes an independent republic, and (as in our existing township and 
district system) is governed in all public affairs by its own sachems. The authority 
.of these rulers is gained by and consists wholly in the opinion the rest of the nation 
have of their wisdom and integrity. They strictly follow, (like the Hollanders,) 
one maxim, formerly used by the Romans, to increase their strength, that is, they 
encourage the people of other nations to incorporate with them." 

"A distinguished feature of their character, (says'De Witt Clinton,) was an 
exalted spirit of liberty, which scouted with equal indignity at domestic or foreign 
control. " We are born free ! " said Garangula, a century before the identical 



Let us now see how the first white Republicans of New-York 
carried out the eclectic principle of citizenship, already indigenous 
to the soil of this State, as shown by Colden ; how " they encour- 
aged the people of other nations to incorporate with them," and 
how the rights and privileges accorded to all men of all nations in 
Holland, were guarantied to settlers of every country in this 
State. 

The first chartered city in the colony was our present metro- 
polis, and the avowed object of her first charter is to establish a 
government, wherein the citizens shall choose their magistrates 
and a representative council annually. (Dunlap.) This charter 
dates in the month of May, 1621. That is, within seven years of 
the first active measures which had been taken and effectually 
carried out for planting the colony of the Hudson. That wide- 
spread colony, being already so advanced as to require a central 
government, which should erect it into a province. 

The trading "stations" previously planted on the Hudson, 
which are at this day populous towns, had each already become 
the nucleus of a " settlement," and in the municipal government, 
two systems, essentially different, obtained. 

In the colonies, as the settlements removed from Manhattan 
were called, the superintending power was in several instances 
lodged in one individual known as the pair von. This " patroon,'' 

words were penned by the immortal Jefferson. With this republic of native 
freemen on our own soil, a formal league was contracted at Schenectady in the 
year 1620, by the first European republicans who ever trod this soil, and these last 
came from the United Provinces, which the acute-minded and sagacious Colden 
recognized as the nearest type of this then only existing American Confederacy. 
That New-York league, though often tested by the dire invasions of the French, 
existed unbroken through one hundred and fifty years of the colonial history of this 
State. Let the speculative reader now revert to the spirit of the institutions of 
either section of that league as here traced by other pens than mine, and then turn 
to the Constitution of New- York for the year 1846, in which the best features 
common to both re-appear, and he must acknowledge that there is no necessity for 
New-Yorkers, whether of to-day or of two hundred years ago, lookino- either to 
Connecticut or to New Plymouth for the genius of New-York institutions. (See 
an interesting paper on this subject by the zealous antiquarian Giles F. Gates, Esq.) 



23 

who at his own expense imported hither the settlers upon his 
manor-grant, was the immediate vassal of the State, and was 
responsible to that sovereign authority for the conduct of the 
tenants upon his manor. In return for their obedience to the act 
of his special courts, edicts, and ordinances, the patroon was bound 
to protect his colonists against the surrounding Indian tribes and 
all other aggressors, and the colonists had the right to address 
themselves by appeal to the supreme authority at Manhattan, in 
case they were either aggrieved or oppressed by said patroon. 

But this provision for drawing capital into the country by the 
erection of manors, constituted only a single feature in the general 
system of colonial government, which was erected upon the follow- 
ing basis : — 

" Those colonists who shall form within their limits such a 
settlement of people as to constitute hamlets, villages, or even 
cities, shall obtain in such case, middle and lower jurisdiction, and 
the same rights as manors in Holland, and shall in like manner be 
capacitated to bear and use the names and titles thereof; and the 
qualified persons* of such cities, villages, and hamlets, shall in 
such case, be authorized to nominate for the office of magistrates, 
a double number of persons, wherefrom a selection shall be made 
by the director and council ; and justice shall be administered in 
these hamlets, villages, and cities, according to the style and order 
of the Provinces of Holland, and the cities and manors thereof; to 
which end the courts shall follow, as far as the same is possible, 
the ordinances received here in New Amsterdam." 

Now I would ask you, if our boasted " Anglo-Saxon " township 
system offers any thing freer than this ] or if there be any charter 
found in the colonial history of America, establishing more clearly 
the privileges of a colonist, whether viewed in reference to the 
town in which he lived, or to the whole province, or to the mother 
country 1 

Well then does the historian of New Netherlandt say, that 

* I can only gather from the spirit of the institutions of Holland, as pourtrayed 
upon a previous page, that each town settled the qualification of its own voters, 
t Dr. O'Callaghan. 



24 

" it is to the Republic of Holland, and the wise and beneficent 
modification of the feudal code, which obtained these, and not to 
the puritanic idea of popular freedom introduced from Connecticut, 
as some incorrectly claim* that New Netherland and the several 
towns within its confines were indebted for whatever municipal 
privileges they enjoyed. The charters under which they were 
planted were essentially Dutch, and not of Connecticut origin; 
and those who look to New England as the source of popular 
privileges in New Netherland, fall therefore into a grievous error, 
sanctioned neither by law nor history." 

But the Englishmen of two hundred years ago themselves best 
recognized the freedom of New Netherland by crowding hither, 
as to an asylum of liberty; by aiding to plant an infant State under 
this very charter, and by taking the oath of allegiance, which 
identified them and their descendants with the existing franchises 
and future prosperity of the commonwealth of which they formed 
a part, and with all the memories and pride of the sovereign State 
of New-York. 

Founded, as this Society is, upon those associations which 
mark our independent existence, whether as a colony, a province, 
or a state, without any reference to the extraction of its members, t 
whether Hollander, Huguenot, English, or Hindostanee, it may 
still be interesting to mention a few of the diverse peoples which, 
in the early days of New- York, were again and again grafted in 
among the three races which form the basis of the Knickerbocker 
stock. For the three great eras of New-York colonization are its 
first commercial planting by the Hollanders; its becoming the 
principal asylum of the Huguenots in America after the revocation 
of the edict of Nantes ; and the influx of Cavalier and anti-Puritan 
English, after it became a province of the British Stuarts.^ 

* Bancroft. 

+ The conditions of membership of the St. Nicholas Society of New-York, have 
no reference to a Dutch extraction, as is generally supposed. Chancellor Jones, 
the venerable president, is a descendant of a Welsh officer, who, like the founders 
of several other distinguished New-York families of similar extraction, served in 
the armies of the Prince of Orange before coming to settle in this State. 

X These last ultimately stamped the language of New-York ; whose very 



25 

In 1624, ten years after the Hollanders established their three 
torts on the Hudson, and commenced that line of posts which soon 
extended from the Connecticut to the Delaware, we have the first 
infusion here of the different races from which, one hundred years 
later-, the genuine Knickerbocker was evolved. 

A large body of Walloons, inhabitants of the frontier between 
France and Flanders, who spoke the old Gallic language, and 
professed the reformed religion, applied in 1622 to Sir Dudley 
Carlton to settle in Virginia, with the privilege of erecting a town 
there. The Walloons, during " the thirty years" war, distinguished 
themselves for their valor and savage spirit, and the governor of 
Virginia seems not to have given a satisfactory reply to what he 
probably considered an arrogant condition, which they proposed 
as the basis of any settlement in his colony, viz: — That they should 
be governed by magistrates elected by themselves* Several 
families of these Walloons therefore, established themselves (in the 
year 1624,) in New Netherland, within the confines of the present 
town of Brooklyn, on Long Island, where the Wallabout (or " Bay 
of Foreigners," — Wale Bocht,) still identifies their memory with 
the locality; and several other families of the same race, taking 
one of Christianse' " stations" as the nucleus of their colony, 
augmented the settlement at the base of the Katzbergs, near the 
head of ship navigation, on the Hudson. 

In 1642 a band of representatives of the English race appear 
in New Netherland, and plant themselves beside their Belgic and 
Gallic predecessors, with whom they soon become blended by 
intermarriage. In this year a band of religionists, led on by the 
Rev. Mr. Doughty, Richard Smith, and others, who had followed 
the Pilgrims from old England to New England, were compelled 
to withdraw from the latter country by the persecution they received 
there ; and, after making formal application to the authorities of 

English provincialisms, in many respects so different from other English provincial- 
isms of New England, go far to disprove an identy of provincial origin in the 
English settlers of either colony ; much less that the Puritans ever imprinted their 
peculiarities upon New-York as " New England's eldest daughter ! " 
» O'Callaghan. 



2G 

New Netherland, they had a grant of land assigned to them. 
Endowed with the usual privileges of free manors, such as free 
exercise of their religion, powers to plant towns, build churches, 
nominate magistrates, and administer civil and criminal jurisdiction. 
Six months later, Throgmorton, who had already been driven with 
Roger Williams from Massachusetts by the fiery Hugh Peters, 
procured permission to settle thirty-five families on the lands in 
Westchester county, now known as Throg's Neck, which the New 
Netherlanders at that time named Vredeland, or •' Land of Peace." 
A meet application, as O'Callaghan remarks, " for the spot selected 
by those who were bruised and broken down by religious perse- 
cution." In the same year the Lady Moody, with her minor son, 
Sir Henry, and many followers, fled in a similar manner from New 
England to the asylum of New Netherland, and founded the town 
of Gravezande, (now Gravesend,) on Long Island. To which 
island Thomas Ffarrington, John Townsend, William Lawrence, 
John Ffirman, and others, were compelled, in the next twenty 
months, to remove with their families, from New England ; and 
after accepting a grant of land from the authorities of New Nether- 
land, enroll themselves as liegemen of that province. 

The historian De Laet says, in speaking of this period of the 
history of New Netherland, " numbers, nay, whole towns, to escape 
from the insupportable government of New England, removed to 
New Netherland to enjoy that liberty denied them by their own 
countrymen." So great was the influx of Englishmen who came 
now, not as the veritable Pilgrims had proposed in Holland, " to 
reform any thing which was amiss" among their entertainers, 
but to enjoy true Knickerbocker freedom, that the director-general 
of this province, in order " to prevent the disturbance of harmony 
and social intercourse, more or less, by the incoming of so many 
strangers to reside here," appointed George Baxter as " English 
secretary of the council of New Netherland." It is worth stating 
in this connection, however, that the Dutch language is at this very 
day still spoken in many of the localities of Long Island by some 
of the descendants of these, then " strangers." It is to this early 
English immigration that certain ingenious theorists have attempted 



27 

to trace the liberties of New- York, and establish them as of 
Puritan origin. But these men most assuredly came not hither to 
bring "Puritan freedom," but to escape "pure Anglo-Saxon" 
tyranny, and their descendants have ever been among the staunchest 
children of St. Nicholas. 

All these immigrants, as well as some who came in from 
Virginia about this period, took the oath of fidelity to the director 
and council of New Netherland, " to follow the director or any of 
his council wherever they shall lead; faithfully to give instant 
warning of any treason or other detriment to this country, that 
shall come to their knowledge ; to assist to the utmost of their 
powers in defending with their treasure and their blood, the 
inhabitants thereof, against all enemies." 

In the cordial reception of these immigrants we have the fullest 
recognition of the cosmopolitan spirit which has since then made 
New-York the metropolis of the Union. In the jealous exaction 
of this formidable oath of fealty, we have the most solemn safe- 
guard against the perversion of that cosmopolitan spirit to any 
external use against the pride and honor of the land we call out- 
own. In confirmation of the latter spirit, we have the words of 
that curious proclamation of the council of New Netherland, which, 
ten years later, marks the presence of the next element of the 
Knickerbocker lineage. 

This paper, which bears date 18th September, 1648, sets forth, 
" Whereas it has been seen with great concern, that many Scotch 
merchants, who, from time to time, come from their own country 
over here, after having sold out their cargoes, go with their ships 
to some other place without doing any benefit to this country, 
which is an injury to our people, who are obliged to bear all the 
burdens : Therefore it is deemed adviseable for the inhabitants of 
New Netherland to take action, so that from this time forth, all 
Scotch merchants and small dealers who come over from their 
own country with the intention of trading here, shall not be per- 
mitted to carry on any trade in the land, until after they have had 
a residence here in New Netherland three years. And further- 



28 

more, they shall be compelled, within one year after their arrival, 
to erect a decent habitable tenement in New Netherland."* 

The next element of Knickerbockerhood dates from the year 
1665, when the colony of " New Swedeland " surrendered to Peter 
Stuyvesant, who, upon the refusal of the Swedes to swear allegi- 
ance to the conquerors, "picked out the flower of the Swedish 
troops, and sent them, with some of the principal inhabitants, to 
Manhattan. "t A portion of these established themselves in this 
city, while others soon removed to the Walloon colony of Esopus, 
in what is now Ulster county.| 

* Paulding's New Amsterdam. 

t See Coll. New- York Historical Society, 1814 and 1841. 

t Coll. New-York Historical Society. Many of these Swedish colonists were 
Finns. Dunlap, vol. i. p. 127, shows how intimate was the relation kept up five years 
after this period, between the Swedes of New-York and those on the Delaware ; 
the latter of whom, being the most numerous, were confidently appealed to by the 
former in 1670, to assist them in building a place of worship, and the governor gave 
permission to a Swedish gentleman, upon petition of the ministers and elders of the 
Lutheran Church of New -York, to go to Delaware to solicit benefactions for that 
purpose. The names of the Swedes, alike both of those who were transplanted to 
Manhattan, and those who remained upon the Delaware, soon changed and 
assimilated in sound to the names of the Dutch, German, or English neighborhoods 
that surrounded them. To a list of Swedish colonists given by Andrew Rudman, 
there is the following note in the Rev. Mr. Clay's Annals of the Swedes on. the 
Delaware. " The reader will perceive how much the orthography of many of the 
above names has changed in progress of time : Bengsten is now Bankson ; Bonde 
has become Boon ; Svcnsen, Swanson ; Gostasson, Justis ; Jonasson, Jones ; Jocum, 
Yocum ; Kyn, Keen; Hoppman, Hoffman; Von Culen, Culen; Hailing, Hew- 
lings ; Wihler, Wheeler, etc." The American Scandinavian Society ought to look 
after the traditions of this colony, in reference to which the Rev. Mr. Clay, in the 
work above quoted, justly complains that " the geographers and historians of 
America, while they have been very particular in detailing the circumstances 
connected with the arrival and settlement of the English on James river, and of 
the Pilgrims in New England, scarcely mention that there was ever such a colony 
as the Swedes on the Delaware." But, alack for the poor Swedes, the merciless 
eatire of Irving has given their last battle at Fort Christina such unhappy immor- 
tality, that neither poetry, preaching, nor Frederika Bremer could now ever effect 
for the Bird-grip what the two former have done for the Mayflower ; whose 



29 

In 166 i crowded in the cavalier followers of the now restored 
Stuarts, some of whom, (like the Pilgrim fathers,) had been 
sojourners, with their prince, in Holland, and spoke her language; 
as did the brave Calvinist " Captain John Underhill with his wife," 
Lyon Gardiner, who also " had served in the low countries," and 
other English exiles and soldiers of fortune who preceded the cava- 
liers, and played an active part in the Indian wars of Long Island; 
where some of Charles II's Tangier officers took up their manor 
grants beside them, and in the mention of their neighborhood, 
bring up, to this day, their military service in Africa as immortalized 
in the quaint periods of old Pepys. Many were the manor grants 
made to these last comers amid the fair lands of New-York, when 
the bigotted English Duke, from which the Niagara State takes 
its unmeaning provincial name, established a British government 
over the province. 

Twenty years later, following the detached families of Norman 
Protestants, who had previously come hither through the ports of 
Holland, began thegreat Huguenot immigration into New-York, 
when so many families of persecuted Frenchmen migrated hither, 
and established themselves, some in the city of New-York, some 
on Staten Island, some at New Rochelle, in Westchester county, 
some near De Vrie's ancient station, in what is now Rockland 
county, and some, it is believed, in New Paltz, Ulster county. 

In 1710 New-York, " originally only a field of wild-wood 
enterprize for the Dutch and Scotch fur trader, but at an early day 
the chosen asylum of the French anti-Romanist and English anti- 
Puritan," became the asylum of three thousand German exiles, 
who, flying from the devastation of " the blazing Palatinate," 
migrated in one body to the valley of the Hudsou; while the wars 
of Europe, and especially the discomfiture of the pretender to the 
British crown in 1715, sent hither many an English, Irish,* and 

very name alone can sink the whole Swedish navy of American emigration — the 
Bird-grip, and Key of Calmer, the Swan, Eagle, and Golden Shark, the Fama, 
Charitas, Black-cat, and Mercurius. 

* The Irish immigration into New-York, which for several generations has 
perhaps exceeded that of any other race, seems not to have been very large before 



30 

Scottish soldier, who fought under opposite banners abroad; — sent 
the banished captive, and his land-bountied conqueror to sit down 
side by side and cultivate the arts of peace together upon the 
genial soil of New-York. 

The political history of our State in the intervening and sub- 
sequent years, incessantly brings up the names of different repre- 
sentations of all these races. 

It is often ajar-ring history when we look to public life, but in 
the private circle there seems to have been an early absorption of 
national peculiarities into one general colonial character, based in 
the main upon domestic habits.* 

the Revolution ; although, (as in the case of the Irish Clintons intermarrying with 
the Dutch De Witts, originating the former distinguished New-York family,) a 
o-enealogist would discover that Irish blood contributed at an early day to form the 
characteristic stock of New- York. 

* That is according to tho competent testimony of an enlightened European 
observer, who resided here for many years in the middle of the last century, when 
New-York was at her full social maturity, and when the witness to the condition 
of things here was the acute and discerning friend and correspondent of the critical 
Dugald Stewart, the great metaphysician. 

According to the intelligent Mrs. Grant of Laghan, whose delightful reminis- 
cences of early New-York, have of late years found a singular counterpart in the 
pictures of Swedish society given by Fredrika Bremer, there were in her day but 
few youth of character or respectability, who had not made one or more expeditions 
to the frontiers, serving at least one campaign in the interminable wars on the 
Canadian frontier. Yet, the great simplicity of manners, the peace, security, and 
abundance which prevailed in the Valley of the Hudson, gave to that favored 
region a character of almost pastoral tranquillity. " This singular community," 
says the observing Scotch woman, " seemed to have a common stock, not only of 
sufferings and enjoyments, but of information and ideas." Some pre-eminence in 
point of knowledge, there certaiidy was, yet those who possessed it seemed scarcely 
conscious of their superiority. The daily occasions which called forth the exertions 
of mind, sharpened sagacity, and strengthened character ; avarice and vanity were 
there confined to very nan ow limits ; of money there was very little, (wampum 
beads being actually for a whole generation the principal medium of exchange,) 
and dress was, though in some instances valuable, not subject to the caprice of 
fashion ; the beasts of prey that haunted their enclosures, (for wolves and bears 
especially abound in this colony,) and the enraged savages that always hung 
threatening on their boundaries, made them more and more endeared to each other. 



The Pioneers of New- York then were, as we have seen, of 
any other than " Puritan Anglo-Saxon " origin. From the brown 

In this calm infancy of society the rigors of law slept, because the fury of turbulent 
passions had not yet awakened it. Fashion, that whimsical tyrant of adult com- 
munities, had not yet erected her standard ; " yet no person," says Mrs. Grant, 
"appeared uncouth or ill-bred, because there was no accomplished standard of 
comparison ; their manners, if not elegant and polished, were at least easy and 
independent, while servility and insolence were equally unknown." Belted in, as 
it wore, by the formidable Iroquois on their northern and western border, and 
acknowledging those martial tribes as their chief bulwark against the allied Hurons 
and French of Canada, they were thus brought in immediate contact with those 
whom the least instance of fraud, insolence, or grasping meanness, might have 
converted from even valuable friends into resistless enemies. They were thus, we 
are told, compelled at first to " assume a virtue if they had it not," while the daily 
pressure of circumstance, at last rendered that virtue habitual. 

With regard to the New-York women of that day, the same writer bears par- 
ticular testimony that while their confined education precluded elegance of mind, 
the simplicity of their manners was as far removed as possible from vulgarity. 
" At the eame time," she observes, " these unembellished females had more com- 
prehension of mind, more variety of ideas, more,- in short, of what may be called 
original thinking, than could be easily imagined." Indeed it was on the women 
that the task of religious instruction chiefly devolved ; and the essentials rather than 
the ceremonials of piety, being instilled by them, the mothers of the colony were 
thus regarded with a reverence which gave a simple earnestness to the character 
when mixing in secular concerns. 

Of the domestic, or rather the out-of-door pursuits of these simple housewives, 
there is one charming picture which has come down to us. While the custom of 
the male head of the household cherishing some ancient tree planted immediately 
in front of the door-way, was almost universal in both tov/n and country, alike in 
Albany and New-York, as well as in every rural settlement, each dwelling was 
adorned with its little garden, which was under the special care of the mistress of 
the family. The garden spot, devoted equally to flowers and esculent vegetables, 
was thought to evidence equally the advance of her taste and the condition of her 
house-keeping. After describing these gardens as " extremely neat, but small, 
and not by any means calculated for walking in," the European resident exclaims, 
" I think I yet see what I have so often beheld in both tov/n and country, a 
respectable mistress of a family going out to her garden in an April morning, with 
her great calash, her little painted basket of seeds, and her robe over her shoulders, 
to her garden labors. These were by no means figurative ; 

'From morn till uoon, from noon till dewy eye,' 



32 

plains of Normandy and the green vales of England ; from the 
sunny hills of Savoy and the bleak wastes of Finland, came they 

a woman in very easy circumstances and abundantly gentle in form and manners, 
would sow and plant, and rake, incessantly." These fair gardeners (we are also 
told) were likewise good florists, and displayed much emulation and solicitude in 
their pleasing employment. 

In connection with this glimpse of not uninteresting homely habits it may be 
worth while to recur to the condition of slavery in early New-York. So utterly is 
this institution now effaced from among us, that it has become difficult to realize 
how much is due to the far-seeing statesman and pure patriot, through whose 
instrumentality, chiefly, abolition was effected within our borders. Yet in no 
colony of our present Union did slavery more generally prevail than in that of 
New-York ; for while the social distinctions, depending upon taste and education, 
were quietly respected, there was here no division of society into two great classes, 
as at the south ; where one great landed proprietor could count hundreds of human 
beings as his serfs, while another of the same blood, was sunk almost below the 
servile tiller of the soil, by the very fact of his owning no property in any man but 
himself. For, while the number of slaves in any New-York family rarely exceeded 
a dozen, there was hardly a dwelling in the colony that did not shelter some of 
these family appendages. Slavery was indeed here literally " a domestic institu- 
tion." " There were no field negroes," no collection of cabins remote from the 
house, known as " the negro quarters." The slaves lived under the same roof, 
and partook of the same fare as the rest of the family, to which they belonged. 
They were scrupulously baptised too, and shared the same religious instruction with 
the children of the family. There was no especial law, we are told, preventing 
the barter of slaves ; but a natural sentiment, which had grown into a custom, as 
compulsory as any law, prevented the separation of families ; and, above all, the 
sale of any child without the permission of the mother, who would often exercise 
her own caprice in designating its future master. The exchange of slaves was 
also almost invariably limited to family relatives. When a negro woman's child 
attained the age of three years, it was solemnly presented, the first new year's day 
following, to the son, or daughter, or other young relation of the family, who was 
of the same sex with the child so presented ; and when in after years, the youthful 
master went out to seek his fortunes upon the frontiers, a thousand instances are 
related of the fidelity and devotion of these sable 6quires, amid the perils of the 
wilderness. 

There is one remark which I will venture to make, in connection with this 
branch of our subject, because its truth may be, even at this late day, verified in 
Rockland, Orange, Kings, Queens, and other counties of this State, where the full- 
blooded descendants of these negro slaves are still found with their African features 
and complexions, wholly unchanged. In this colony alone was it enstomary. 






hither to this " land of a thousand lakes ; " where blithely gathered 
the Salmon fisher of Erin's rivers, and the hunter of the Stag 
through Scottish heather, to ply their sport amid the forest fast- 

among the rural population, (after the fashion of dealing with the household serfs 
of northern Europe, in the olden time,) to seat the menials at the lower end of the 
family board, hut notwithstanding this familiar contact with the race, amalgamation, 
as I have already hinted, was utterly unknown to our forefathers. The mulatto 
mixture was introduced here from other States. As a happy confirmation of the 
truth of this observation, derived from other sources, I may mention, that after 
writing thus far, I found, upon referring to the work from which I have already so 
freely quoted, the valuable testimony of its writer, given in the following words : — 
" It is but justice to record a singular instance of moral delicacy, distinguishing 
this settlement (the Colony of New-York,) from every other in the like circum- 
stances. Though from their simple and friendly modes of life, they were from 
infancy in habits of familiarity with their negroes, yet being early taught that 
nature had placed between them a barrier, which it was in a high degree criminal 
and disgraceful to pass, they considered a mixture of such distinct races with abhor- 
rence, as a violation of her laws. This greatly conduced to the preservation of 
family happiness and concord. It may be thought remarkable, that our forefathers, 
while deducing not only their general code of morality, but this special creed as to 
the preservation of castes from the Bible, likewise pretended to find in the same 
good book the most unquestionable authority for holding the black race in bondage. 
They imagined that they had found the negro condemned to perpetual slavery, 
and thought nothing remained for them but to lighten the chains of their fellow 
Christians after having made them such." 

We have now to confess, that though the schoolmaster was abroad among 
these primitive people, there were few of them, who, in the expressive language of 
our day, could be called " pure intelligences." 

Of law, we are drily told by a contemporary, the generality of those people 
knew very little ; of philosophy, nothing at all, save as they found them both in the 
Bible ; the time-cherished possession of every family ; and often their only literary 
treasure. We have now the laws, the poetry, and philosophy, of which they were 
so deplorably ignorant ; yet the law-giver, the poet, and the philosopher, might 
perhaps perversely decide that the spirit which gives vitality to these elements of 
social elevation, was hardly more diffused than formerly. They either and all of 
them might declare that Order, the first and highest law of Heaven itself — that 
Truth and Naturalness, the basis of all poetry — that Happiness, the ultimate aim 
of all philosophy — though by no means so well understood as now, were practised 
nearly as well ; were enjoyed almost as generally as in our enlightened day. — Coll. 
New-York Historical Society. 
3 



34 

nesses of New- York, with men who had slaked the fever-thirst of 
battle in the Rhine and the Scheldt : whither too, to stamp our share 
in the heritage of England's wit and gaiety, and jocund spirit of 
prime fellowship, drifted the roystering companions of that " merry 
monarch," whose inborn selfishness has put many a genial heart 
for ever out of humor with kingly courtesy and cavalier mirth. 

Now when we remember that stringent circumstance handles 
the plastic power in America which the mumbling fingers of time 
manages in older countries ; and revert to the character of Ken- 
tucky, as marked as that of any State in the Union, although it has 
originated, grown up, and developed itself since the Revolution, 
we need not wonder that a wholesome attrition of habits, opinions, 
and prejudices, rapidly developed in New- York a marked phase 
of society. A phase of society which the European visitor of nearly 
a hundred years ago characterized as " eminently liberal and 
tolerant, and marked by a happy fusion of national prejudices."* 
The free and hearty spirit of the veritable Knickerbocker was at 
that time fairly evolved from the soil of New-York; and it took not 
only the " Anglo-Saxon" but all the tribes of Europe to produce 
that social and political atmosphere in which the native genius of 
all countries has ever been cordially welcomed; and where that of 
New England, especially, has matured some of its noblest fruits. 
And those fruits — if I have fairly traced the meaning of New- York 
history, and justly interpreted the spirit of New- York institutions, 
can never righteously be plucked from the generous soil which 
nurtured them, to minister either to foreign national vanity, or to 
elevate any scholastic home theory of caste, origin, or religion! all 
of which the men of New- York, at the very inception of her coloni- 
zation ; all of which they set aside for a different basis of citizenship. 
That basis, being simply domiciliation, and loyalty to the pride, 
honor, and dignity of the commonwealth. 

The law of social and political progress in New England, as 

* " Our ancestry may be traced to four nations, the Dutch, the British, the 
French, and the Germans. It would have been strange had a people so formed, 
been tainted with national prejudices. Far from it. We are, if I may be allowed 
to say so, born cosmopolite." — Governeur Morris. 



35 

we gather it from her many able and patriotic writers, has been 
the gradual liberalizing of a strict demi-ecclesiastic caste of men 
of a homogeneous origin. The law of progressive civilization in 
colonial New- York, was simply that of mind acting upon mind, 
without appeal to any admitted standard doctrine — the attrition of 
man acting upon man, without reference to either identity of race 
or superiority of origin. 

When therefore the colonists of New- York, who had here 
practised their opposing creeds, while blending their different 
races, for many generations preceding the era of the Declaration of 
Independence — when the people of New-York, I say, took their 
place in the American confederacy as an independent people, the 
type of character developed by their peculiar condition, was 
already marked — marked strongly and emphatically — but marked 
by any thing else than the characteristics of Puritanism ; which 
are now so often erroneously held up as representing the seminal 
principles of freedom both in this State and others. 

1 say " erroneously," for in this colony, even in the early days 
of the Dutch rule, the full privileges of citizenship were here 
accorded to all who had a direct interest in the soil ; while in 
Massachusetts Bay colony, where the ministers of religion were 
not restricted to powers purely spiritual, similar privileges were 
denied to all who were not received into the Church of which 
Plymouth Rock was the corner-stone. 

The amiable Robinson had admonished his people that " more 
light would come." Yet, while our neighbors disdained to borrow 
the light of toleration from New Netherland, those of their own 
blood, who brought more light to the Puritans, were compelled to 
fly to the Dutch here for an asylum, even as their rigorous brethren 
had in former years fled to the Dutch of Holland ; until Roo-er 
Williams, the good, the liberal, the charitable, driven out with the 
rest, planted the tree of toleration in Rhode Island. 

But let us look more closely into these modern claims of 
political Puritanism, of which we now hear so much, as originating 
the theory and setting in motion the practice of North American 
liberty. Is the germ of all American freedom traceable to Plymouth 



36 

Rock 1 Is the genius of American institutions referable solely to 
the Puritan origin of New England] 

Guizot calls the reformation begun by Luther " an insurrection 
of the human mind against the absolute power of spiritual order ! " 
Now Puritanism, instead of being at the head of that insurrection, 
came in after the battle was half fought; came in as the claimant, 
the claimant by Divine right, of a new form of spiritual control, 
not less absolute than that which it opposed ! 

It was a brave spirit, that of old Puritanism ; and I yield to 
none in honoring its undaunted antagonism to older forms of des- 
potism over the rights of conscience — but it was not less a des- 
potism? 

It was an adventurous spirit, that of old Puritanism, and I. 
honor it not less for its self-martyrdom of exile, than for its 
unflinching grapple with the dogmas of its enemies. 

But I will not recognize its ferocious intolerance in forcing its 
own dogmas upon Quakers and Anabaptists in this land, as proving 
that it offered a true priesthood for the altars of freedom! I will 
not recognize that its blind uses of power have proved aught to 
the world in the science of liberty — aught save the mental 
vigor and conscientious hardihood of its stern asserters of narrow 
doctrine. 

And, speaking still of Puritanism in its political aspect — I will 
recognize its hard earned triumphs as marking more than one 
glorious tide in the moving waters of human freedom — but I will 
not recognize it as the spirit which first released the waves — I will 
not recognize it as the compelling power which still teaches deep 
to call unto deep until the true knowledge of human rights is wide 
spread as the ocean, and the voices of true liberty are echoed from 
every shore. 

Hear the language which these Pilgrim fathers used in reference 
to their free-hearted hosts of Holland, when assigning their reasons 
for leaving that hospitable land of stubborn tolerance. 

" Inasmuch as in ten years time, whilst we sojourned among 
them, we could not bring them to reform any thing amiss among 
them." 



37 

Now the prerogative to meddle with the concerns of your 
neighbor, here asserted with such unconscious simplicity ; to meddle 
according to your conscience, and your opinion of what is good for 
your neighbor, is directly opposed to the notions of liberty, in 
which the forefathers of New-York were tutored, and is still most 
repugnant to some of their descendants as the great political 
impertinence of the present day. 

And here a few words as to the mode of meddling. 

The Puritans brought from England this grand axiom of 
resistance to monarchy and aristocracy. Associated opinion — 
organized sentiment is the great engine of a people's power against 
hereditary oppression. 

Here was a great political truth. Here was the introduction 
of a moral Church into politics to countervail the ancient influence 
of unmeaning party cries, or unthinking fealty to a leader. But 
upon this truth the veritable Pilgrims stopped short ! 

Now what learned the recusants of their order in Holland? 
what did they come to practise along with their Dutch friends here 
in New Netherland 1 They learned the true principle of individual 
representation; and that an oligarchy of associated doctrine is in 
a free country the most subtle instrument wherewith to strangle 
individual liberty. And they came to New Amsterdam to practise 
resistance against such an oligarchy which they left behind them 
in Massachusetts Bay. 

The first great principle of the Plymouth Rock men, in after 
years, contributed largely, in these northern States, to make us a 
nation : .the last inbred spirit of the men of New-York can alone 
keep us free among ourselves. 

In the war of the Revolution these two great forces of national 
and of home freedom acted in accord, But they have often, both 
before and since then, been arrayed against each other; and they 
will still be continually in conflict until their relative bearing and 
respective value are clearly understood by our countrymen. 

I need not remind you how their action has been illustrated in 
New- York of late years, in the campaigns of anti-masonry and 
the disputed claims of political teetotalism ! 



38 

It matters not what part our people took upon either of these 
questions, or whether it was worth while for men of sense to take 
any part. But the excitement among the people of New York 
proved how keenly their sensibilities are alive to the political 
action of any such organized influence, any associated moral church 
with a self-constituted priesthood, undertaking to regulate the State, 
or interpret the lives of its citizens. This keen jealousy of the 
assumption by any society whatever, (whether secret or open) of 
power which has never been delegated by the individual, is the 
antagonist spirit to Political Puritanism, and God grant that it may 
ever be strong in the soul of every true son of New- York. 

I wish clearly to be understood in the use I here make of the 
word " Puritanism " as reflecting in no way upon the religious 
sentiments of any class of men, either here or elsewhere. The 
leading Church doctrines of New England, based upon the prin- 
ciples of Geneva, are common alike to Scotland and to Hulland. 
I take the term in its original purport, when " Puritanism" referred 
not to religious conviction, but simply to that arrogant assumption 
over our neighbor, which prompts us to conspire with others to 
trample apon his individual rights, feelings, habits, and prejudices, 
in the blind assertion of our infallible church of Opinion — a church 
whose first altar is always reared in the soul by the anti-christian 
spirit of " Lam-holier-than-thou .'" 

When it first lifted itself on Plymouth Rock, there, and at 
that time, the spirit of Puritanism was made respectable by the 
pioneering hardihood of those self-banished men ; made worthy 
our reverence by their conscientious earnestness in founding a 
church for their own peculiar faith; made touching by their long 
years of travail and suffering in bearing the ark of their faith about 
with them from shore to shore ! But since then that spirit, 
divorced from these conditions, and held up in its nakedness as the 
true spirit of liberty — held up, too, most often, by those who have 
departed from the very church whose suffering fervor could alone 
sanctify its temporary rule and ministry — has stalked abroad 
through every State in this Union, claiming to be the only true 
representative of the American sentiment of freedom, and wither- 



39 

ing in its grasp all manly independence of action and feeling. It 
siezes upon the press, and under the joint cry of " moral progress " 
and " freedom of discussion," it claims the right to meddle with 
the domestic hearth and private affairs of every citizen : borrowing 
a different form of cant, it juggles itself into the heart of politics; 
where, armed with the patronage of office, it smirkingly avows 
and arrogantly proclaims to its opponents the old dogma of" spoil- 
ing the Egyptians " as a fresh political precept in a Republican 
country. Nor content with its dirty triumphs here, it smoothes 
its grimacing wrinkles at political success, into new blandness of 
complacent hypocrisy, and invades the fields of Literature and 
Art, to cramp their development, and dwindle their growth. The 
poet must no longer write an Anacreontic, because " Teetotalism " 
is the order of the day. The painter must no longer depict the 
gallant deeds of his country's soldier, because "Public Opinion" 
leans to the theory of " Universal Peace." And the same spirit of 
Puritanism, that " Public Opinion " of Plymouth Rock, which 
ejected Roger Williams from Massachusetts, would still make 
feeling, intelligence, thought and talent, the mere handmaids of 
present accepted theory — compel Fancy to dance her hornpipe in 
the splints and bandages of doctrine, and turn the dream of Genius 
into a nightmare on the bed of Procrustes.* 

Beware, then, brethren of St. Nicholas, of the form which inge- 
nious scholars are now teaching the spirit of Puritanism to assume 

* The New England reader at home who is not aware that '* the principles of 
the Puritans,"' and " the principles of '98," are alike appealed to in this State by 
crude Reformer or slang-whanging Politician to promote some partizan movement, 
will smile at the above as unmeaning tirade. The ingenious labors of more thought- 
ful theorists, tracing pretty much all Amerioan free speculation to Plymouth Rock, 
threatens to throw a fearful weight upon that sacred platform. And that which we 
once reverenced as the purely historical crag of New England, lifting itself above 
the ocean in all the majesty of simple granite, certainly does not gain much in our 
eyes, as now daily more and more converted into a mass of political and philoso- 
phical conglomerate, to which each speculative writer pretends that a pebble was 
contributed in his peculiar favor ; and whose friable components they insist upon 
reclaiming in their original state, whether blended with the so'l of the Battery, or 
underlying the pavement of Chestnut -street. 



40 

in this State — that of a purer caste of men, originating beyond your 
own border, who hold up the doings of their forefathers as prece- 
dents for your Government ; teach you their story in the lecture- 
room as what ought to be your story ; write your legalized books 
of education as if your State were a provincial offsprout of theirs ; 
and hold up their local references of habit and authority in your 
very halls of legislation, as law, to order your society. 

I quarrel not with any New Englander for making Plymouth 
Rock his Mecca ; yet I will not accept it as the Delphic oracle 
of New York. I honor the home spirit of those who advance 
themselves as its faithful priests everywhere ; but I deny their 
inspiration, when, by a New England ordination, they claim to be 
our interpreters. 

" The Landing of our Pilgrim Fathers " is the landing of 
Hendrick Hudson ;* and his first crew of brave adventurers from 
the two great maratime nations of Christendom is our nearest type 
of a European origin. If it be not, we want none other at second 
hand, but look for our father-land here upon our own sovereign 
aoil. 

" We grew out of this sacred ground with our pioneer predeces- 
sors,'^ said that accomplished statesman and gallant gentleman, in 
whose veins commingled the blood of the Huguenot martyr with 
that of " the Belgic and British Patriot," which forms the old 
stock of New York, and whose comprehensive genius in tracing 
the story of this State, broke forth into prophecy as he dwelt upon 
our fusion of races upon a soil which had already nurtured the 
noblest and most powerful race of aborigines on this continent — the 

* The anniversary of the 4th September, 1609, was thus celebrated in this State 
by the generation which has just passed away. See Miller's Discourse before the 
N. York Hist. Soc. Why should not the sons of " the Empire State " now recog- 
nize it everywhere? 

t Goveneur 'Morris, who goes on to ask, " Have we not some traits to mark our 
common origin (with) a people free as the air they breathe ; acute, dexterous, elo- 
quent, subtle, brave ? Is it not likely this may be the character of our children's 
children ? Never will those who tread the soil in which the Mohawks lie entomb- 
ed, submit to be slaves." Col. N. Y. Hist. Soc. 1814. 



41 

Roman-like and far conquering Iroquois. The shallow sophis- 
tries of Puritan Anglo-Saxonism had not yet been heard within 
our borders when that philosophic mind of New York ventured 
upon its far-sighted predictions of what those blended forces of 
best manhood must accomplish, in a region whose natural resour- 
ces afford a field for all the most powerful energies of civilization ! 
He looked upon the Susquehanna connecting us with the Chesa- 
peake ; upon the Genesee connecting us with the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence ; upon the Alleghany linking us with the sea of Mexico ; 
upon the great Lakes binding us to the boundless West ; upon the 
Hudson uniting us with the civilized world. He turned from the 
bloody school of our energies, in a hundred and fifty years of bor- 
der wars, and imagined those same indomitable powers applied to 
thenar ts of peace ! * 

The curious speculative theory of that philosophic statesman is 
now History. Yes, it has been History for more than twenty 
years. For the men of New-York were acting History, while 
those in other States were writing it for us and our children ; and 
the successful mingling of those wondrous waters through the 
agency of Clinton's more practical mind, has by introducing a new 
current of population into our State raised such a wave as almost 
to wash from the memory of the present generation the deeds of 
colonial enterprise upon which Mr. Morris predicated his generous 
prophecy. We hear much of the " Empire State," we forget the 
" Empire Colony " — the province where the two most powerful 
nations of Europe so long contended for empire. We forget that 
with a population less than that of either Massachusetts or Vir- 
ginia, here was the great seat of English executive and colonial 
power, in time of peace : and here, as Chancellor Kent has em- 
phatically termed it, was " the Flanders of North America," in time 
of war. 

The bold deeds of Miles Standish and the celebrated names of 

» 
* See Discourse before the N. Y. Hist. Soc. in connection with the testimony 

which Mr. Sparks adduces as to Governeur Morris's agency in our system of inter- 
nal improvements. 



42 

Miantonimo and Philip of Pokanoket, have made the Indian wars 
of New England familiar to every school-boy, familiar as are the 
savage forays into Kentucky of a much later day ; yet — while the 
border conflicts with naked savages of all the other States together, 
would not fill one chapter of the early military history of New- 
York — what do the rising generation know of our own wild-wood 
annals'? what of " those arduous circumstances which marked our 
origin and impeded our growth — those ravages to which we were 
exposed — those persevering efforts to defend our country in the 
long period of nearly one hundred and seventy years ; from the 
first settlement by the Dutch in 1614 to the time when this city 
was evacuated by the British in the close of 1783." It is fortunate 
for the existing inhabitants perhaps, that the old military glory of 
New-York should be merged and forgotten in her present successful 
cultivation of the arts of peace. But while we can trace much of 
the modern spirit of enterprize and improvement in her old colonial 
energies, as exhibited in another sphere of action, that martial 
spirit which first gave them vitality, is not unworthy of commemo- 
ration. That martial spirit which, leaving so few non-combatants, 
made the revolution in New- York truly a civil war ; that spirit of 
action which compelled every New-Yorker to take up arms for 
" King" or " Colony ; " which furnished regiment after regiment 
to the crown, and treble the number to the confederacy; which 
blazed forth with all its desperate energies in the death-grapple of 
brothers at Oriskany, and which is traceable in the gallantry of 
New-York's exiled sons, even down to the field of Waterloo !* 
Surely that military spirit of the storied past should not be forgotten 
while we enjoy its best fruits in the prosperous present. We hear 
much of what our Eastern neighbors endured for the protection of 
doctrine — it may be healthful to hear what our fathers did for the 
protection of home. I might now go back to the Indian wars of 
Governor Kieft, when he made a requisition upon the authorities 

at Albany for " tiuo hundred suits of mail" to repel a threatened 

i 

* Sir William De Lancey, who gallantly fell in the charge at the battle of 
Waterloo, was of the New-York family of that name. 



43 

attack upon Manhattan; an attack which his folly had provoked, 
and which resulted in that Indian onslaught which cut off the 
families of so many settlers, and shut up the survivors for a season 
within the defences of New Amsterdam. But I prefer to turn to 
the general affairs of the whole province, as showing its military 
position for a full century of New-York history. 

The French penetrated to Lake George, nearly simultaneously 
with the Dutch reaching Albany, in 1609. And the wars with 
" New France," which commenced with the earliest period of 
New Netherland history, though ostensibly suspended when the 
parent countries were at peace with each other, were never fully 
concluded till after the conquest of Canada by the British arms; 
and the incessant conflicts between the Iroquois of New- York and 
the Hurons, Otawas, and Adirondacks of the St. Lawrence, were in 
fact a struggle between the French and English, to secure possession 
of Northern and Western New-York. A grasping desire for 
territory on the part of the French, and a bitter jealousy of their 
rivalry in the fur trade, on the part of the New-Yorkers, impelled 
the colonists on either side to share personally in these Indian 
quarrels, without troubling themselves much about the danger of 
compromising politically the mother countries which pretended to 
sway them. 

Whether the French, after drawing their wonderful line of 
forts, which extended through the western wilderness from Quebec 
to New Orleans — whether they really ever hoped to cut a path to 
the Atlantic by the way of the Hudson, it is now difficult to say. 
But long previous to Leisler's ill-starred attempt to expel them 
from Canada, and down to the period when Wolfe triumphed at 
Quebec, the old chronicles which record the formidable descent of 
Count Frontignac, the massacre of Schenectady, and other inroads 
of Hurons and Adirondacks, led on by French officers, tell us 
repeatedly of sudden taxes levied, and men warned to hold them- 
selves ready in arms, even in the city of New- York itself — so 
remote from the scene of the never-ending border strife. 

The first really formidable inroad from " New France," as 
Canada was then called, was that of De Tracey, De Chaumont, 



44 

and De Courcelles, in 1666, with twelve hundred French soldiers 
and one thousand Indians. De Barre's descent with seventeen 
hundred men, followed in 1685. The burning of Schenectady in 
1690, made their next attack memorable. In 1691 they were 
again within fifteen miles of Albany. In 1693 they were repulsed 
from Schenectady by Peter Schuyler. In 1695 three hundred of 
their soldiers made a lodgment at Oswego, while five hundred 
were driven out of New-York by way of Lake Champlain. 

In 1696, one of the best appointed armies that ever displayed 
upon this continent, an army led on by an array of Counts, Barons, 
and Chevaliers, with full battering train, complete camp equipage, 
and comissariat amply provided, penetrated as far as Onondaga 
Lake. The peace of Ryswick brought a breathing spell to the 
province. But in 1710 the old border struggle was renewed, and 
the province remained an armed camp till the peace of Utrecht in 
1713. Again the province is in arms and marching upon the 
French at Niagara in 1727. And the enemy penetrated to Saratoga 
and cut off thirty families in a night in 1747. 

The battle of Lake George, where Sir William Johnson won 
his spurs, and where eight hundred of the invaders, under Dieskau, 
were left dead upon the field, brings us to 1755. The assault of 
the Marquis of Montcalm on Fort Ontario, with four thousand 
troops, follows; and the massacre of Fort William and Henry, 
with the devastation of German Flats on the Mohawk, by the 
invaders, brings us to (1758) the duplicate battle of Lake George, 
when seventeen thousand men, under Abercrombie, were defeated 
by the French; the reduction of Fort Frontinac, on Lake On- 
tario, by three thousand provincials, the fight with the galleys 
on Lake Champlain, and the different affairs of Crown Point and 
Ticonderoga. 

Within the seven years of the War for Independence, the battle 
of Long Island, the battle of White Plains, the storming of Stoney 
Point, the affair of Fort Montgomery, the burning of Kingston, 
the sanguinaiy struggles of Cherry Valley and the Mohawk, with 
Oriskaney, the bloodiest field of all our Revolutionary conflicts, 
and Saratoga the most glorious, crowd in with Niagara, Ticonde- 



45 

roga, and Crown Point, to mark their names yet again upon the 
blazing tablet of our military annals. And still once more, in 1814, 
the events at Fort Erie and Sackett's Harbor, at Champlain, and 
Niagara, swell the records of fierce conflicts upon her soil, and 
approve New-York the battle-field of the Union, the Flanders of 
American History.* 

We all know the part which New England played in the most 
brilliant of those battles ; we all know that where duty calls or 
danger threatens, the sons of the Puritans are there with unblench- 
ing front and arm the readiest to strike. But her surviving soldiery 
from many a desperate field, who afterward returned to incorporate 
themselves with us, and till the soil they had first bathed with their 
blood, came not to preach and write us into the provincial condition 
from which they had aided in rescuing us! And if they brought 
back " the schoolmaster " with them, it was but just that thejbrwn 
and lyceum of other States should minister to the distracted land 
which kept war from their homes by concentrating its devastations 
in this the great Military Arena of the North. But if that ministry 
of " candle, book and bell" is to be the burial of our identity; 
the annihilation of our peculiar and original place in the constellation 
of the Old Thirteen, and the ascription of all the glories of the 
Empire State to a modern and peculiar caste, we had rather that 
the schoolmaster had never been abroad within our borders. 
Reading and writing, although the readiest aid to education, are not 
education itself; intellect is not character; nor can intelligence 
ever stand as a substitute for those sterling qualities of the patriot, 
which at best it but embellishes and makes available. 

I am not one of those who desire to see my country converted into 
a race of intellectual sharpers, nor have I any faith in the deification 
of Cyclopaedias; and however much I may delight in the ingenious 
speculations of " New England Philosophy," I never would dream 
of exchanging for it the New-York touchstone of common sense 
by which its crudities are safely tested. It was in the school of 

• Yet our gallant New-Yorkers in Mexico did not need these memories to 
inspirit them ? 



46 

« 
home, not in the public lecture-room — it was amid the Lares and 

Penates, not in the public temples of Pallas and Apollo, that our 
Schuylers, Jays, Morrises, Livingstons and Clintons, learned best to 
serve their country. "If I do not greatly deceive myself, there is no 
portion of the history of this country which is more instructive or 
calculated to embellish our national character, than the domestic 
history of this State," says the illustrious Chancellor Kent. " Our 
history," adds that thoughtful and earnest inquirer after the Right 
and the True—" Our history will be found upon examination as 
fruitful as the records of any other people, in recitals of heroic 
actions, and in images of resplendent virtue. It is equally well 
fitted to elevate the pride of ancestry, to awaken deep feeling, and 
kindle generous emulation." That "generous emulation" who shall 
presume to strike down its spirit among us, by parcelling out the 
glories of New-York among the different races that erewhile con- 
tributed to swell her population, and then passing them to the 
account of some other state or country, whether American or 
European 1 

I may seem to carry my views of State pride and State feeling 
to extremes. But I do so advisedly ; for these constitute the vital 
principle and informing spirit of State Rights ; and I hold it 
moreover to be but a narrow view of the benefits of the Federal 
System of our Great Union which would limit its influence merely 
to political action. 

A true nationality is only formed upon the realities among the 
people corresponding with the genius of the government ; and in 
these United States a great nationality is not to be built up by ob- 
literating our local esprit clu corps, and merging our sense of local 
rights, our keen perception of local privileges, and our local story » 
and our local pride, in one great clumsy structure of theoretical 
homogeneousness. Learned gentlemen may preach till the end of 
time that this country is " Puritania," but they cannot make it so 
while every election for a town constable reminds us that our fed i 
erative system (whether of town, county, state, or general govern- 
ment) offers all the mechanism for developing each lineament in 
detail, so as to give completeness to the whole fabric of national 



47 

greatness. The aggregate of the traits and proportions thus pro- 
duced will stamp our national character; nay, has already stamped 
it, and he who would truly study the imprint must look to each 
separate die. Let him look to that which New York has wrought 
for herself — look to each graven line, traced by whatever hands, be- 
tween the dates of 1614 and 1S47, and he will find her character as 
distinctly marked as that of any State in the confederacy. And 
yet no State in the Union has absorbed more foreign matter, nor 
moulded it more intimately to the genius of her own institutions. 
Her original founders, in their own country, " acquired power in 
the struggle for existence and wealth under the weight of taxation ;" 
surely the determined race which thus built up the Northern Venice 
in defiance of every principle of political economy, must have 
planted in this State some vigorous element of nationality which 
equally bids defiance to the strongest conditions for subverting 
any local character, and permeates as now its still incoming 
population ! 

The philosophic statesman who, nearly forty years ago, drew 
the parallel which I have been more than once tempted to carry 
out in this discourse, observes, that " He who visits the nations 
which Tacitus and Caesar have described will be struck with 
a resemblance between those who inhabit particular districts, and 
those who dwelt there so many centuries ago. Notwithstanding 
the wars and conquests which have laid waste, depopulated, and 
repeopled Europe; notwithstanding the changes of government, 
and those which have been wrought by the decline and by the ad- 
vance of society and the arts ; notwithstanding the differences of 
religion, and the difference of manners, resulting from all these 
circumstances ; still the same distinctive traits of character reappear. 
Similar souls are animated by similar bodies." And if the spirit 
of New-York's early founders still lives in their descendants, it is 
because those European planters found the homestead principle 
already rooted here in the hearts of the only aboriginal tribes of 
America, who acknowledged the influence of woman, even as the 
German tribes, described by Tacitus, made that influence the cor- 
ner-stone of their nationality. 



48 

" Our ancestors," said the Iroquois Chiefs to the Governors of 
New York, " loved their land. And why ] Because they loved 
their women and children ! Our ancestors considered it a great 
offence to reject the counsels of their women. They were esteemed 
the mistresses of the soil."* 

These are the same people who told the European diplomat 
that came among them, " We are born free — we depend neither 
upon France or England." And told him this in a speech whose 
biting irony, splendid imagery, and solid reasoning, marks it as 
one of the most consummate pieces of ancient or modern oratory. 
A speech as sublime for its invective, as that of another Iroquoist 
is touching for its pathos ; and that eloquence, indigenous to the 
soil of New-York, will hereafter, as formerly, plead trumpet- 
tongued from the lips of her children against our faithlessness, if 
we permit her peculiar story to be overlaid by that of any other 
State. 

When next therefore you hear " the principles of our Puritan 
ancestry" appealed to in a New-York legislature, as authority here, 
repel with indignation the arrogant assumption over your own 
original sovereignty. And when again you are told from a New- 
York rostrum, that " the Pilgrim fathers of Plymouth Rock" first 
opened this continent and introduced freedom, religion, and civili- 

* Clinton's discourse before the New York Historical Society, 1811. The names 
of " the principal women" of the Iroquois or Five Nations, are always appended to 
their land treaties. See Colden, and the Archives of this State. The fact of the 
admitted influential condition of the women among the aborigines of New-York, 
Is worth noting at this time, when certain European philosophers are busy in 
tracing modern civilization not to Christianity, but, the position of women among 
the ancient Germans. 

t " Logan, the Mingo chief." The English called the Iroquois Mingoes, and 
Mr. Jefferson's famous Indian orator was a countryman of Garangula, upon whose 
eloquence De Witt Clinton has commented as above. " Red Jacket," at once so 
persuasively eloquent and so epigrammatically sarcastic, was of the same stock ; and 
Clinton insists that " you may search in vain for a single model of eloquence among 
any other nation of Indians except the Iroquois; the faint glimmerings of genius, 
which are sometimes to be found in their speeches, are evidently derivative and 
borrowed from the Iroquois." — Clinton's Discourse. 



49 

zation here, on the soil which you tread — plant yourselves upon 
your own peculiar story, and let the barriers of history repel the 
offensive encroachment. 

If the question be that of priority of physical enterprize, point 
to Fort Orange at the head of the navigation of the Hudson in 
1614, and tell them that the naval flag of New-York was first 
hoisted in a barque built here in 1618, by the people who then 
owned the mastery of the seas.* 

If the question be of political freedom, appeal to the ancient 
charter of the Hudson river colonists, and the movement in this 
city in relation to " the stamp act," ten years before the famous 
" Boston tea party."t 

If of religious freedom, point to the article in our New Neth- 
erland land patents, securing perfect liberty of conscience. 

If the question be of religion itself, as the sanction of our fran- 
chises, recall the sixth of September 1645, proclaimed by the 
governor-general of New Netherland as " a day of general thanks- 
giving to God Almighty, to be observed in churches of every persuasion 
throughout the province, in pious acknowledgment of the blessings 
which he has been pleased to bestow upon this country.''^ 

* 1773, March 8th, The assembly entered at large on their journals a state- 
ment of the right of the colony of New-York with respect to its eastern boundary 
on Connecticut river : asserting priority of possession by the Dutch. " They (the 
Dutch) had in 1612 a town and fort (near New-York,) and in 1614 a town and 
fort (near Albany.)" — Dunlap's Appendix. 

While this discourse is passing through the press, a newspaper, published in 
New- York, observes, (amid some grossly disparaging remarks, launched in the 
most virulent spirit of exclusive Anglo-Saxonism, against the founders of this city,) 
that the Hollanders, even in the meridian of their maritime power, were subdued 
here by the English. This impression of New-York having finally become by 
conquest an appendage to the British crown, is one of the questionable assumptions 
in our popular history — as it is generally written. The province of New-York 
treacherously seized upon in time of peace by the English in 1664, was recovered 
by the Hollanders in 1673, and remained under a Dutch governor (Anthony Colve) 
until finally passed over to the sovereignty of England, in exchange for Surinam, 
by the treaty of Breda. 

t See note at the end. 

X O'Callaghan's History of New Netherland. 
4 



50 

And lastly, if the question be of civilization, and the onward 
spirit of the age, point to the genial and gentle habits of that 
people, who, stern in their patriotism as they were free-hearted in 
their sports,* furnished three martyrs to political liberty (in 1691,) 
neither of whom were Puritans ; each of whom represented a 
prominent type of our population. 

" I stand here in the name of the freeholders of New-York," 
said Milbourne, one hundred and fifty years ago, in the convention 
at Albany. "I pronounce the charter of the English King null. 
The people of New-York have the power to choose their own 
officers, and every incumbent shoukl be subjected to a free election ." 

Milbourne died for that sentiment, then so new, so startling, and 
so boldly uttered. 

I rule here, said Leisler, in the name of the people of New- 
York, and by the same right which has called William of Orange 
to the throne of England— the voice of my countrymen. The only 
council which I acknowledge is the c mmittee chosen by the free 
and open election of the freemen of this province in their respective 

counties. 

Leisler perished on the scaffold for that rule, and Governettr, 
the third of these patriots, barely escaped with his life.t 

These three gallant men, tl e Netherlander, the Englishman, 
and the Huguenot, offer conjointly a glorious type of the Repub- 

* " Whereas," says the record of the burgomasters and schepens of Manhattan, 
" the winter festivals are at hand, it is found good that between this date and three 
weeks after Christmas, the oidinary meetings of the court shall be dispensed with." 
The spring festival was similarly honored by grave and aged citizens, setting aside 
the solemn concerns of public and private business, to take a share in the sports, as 
the following official May-day announcement will sho it :— 

" With the customary bell-ringing at the City Hall was published the renewed 
order concerning the planting of the Maypole, and the damage which maybe done 
in consequence of the general sports. By these words it is made known that any 
damage which may ensue from the general rejoicings, shall be made kuown to the 
burgomasters at the City Hall immediately thereafter, when Pleasures shall be 
taken to furnish reparation."— Paulding's Affairs and Men of New Amsterdam. 

t See " The administration of Jacob Leisler," in Sparks' American Biography, 
vol. iii., new series. 



51 

lican ancestry of New- York. But how have New-Yorkers pre- 
served their memory 1 Why that first triumph of an independent 
political spirit, that first well ordered success of The People, which 
gave a two years democratic rule to this State one hundred and 
fifty years ago, is it not still fondly cherished in Tammany Hall, 
which was built over the grave of one of the martyrs? 

Ask the sachems of that patriotic institution! 

It is treasured at least among your city archives upon the same 
roll which gives the name of Peter de la Noye, the first man that 
was ever elected by the freeholders and freemen of Manhattan to 
the mayorality of New- York % 

Ask our living civic fathers !* 

It lives then, if no where else, where the statue of the first and 
last Merchant Governor of New-York, the man whom the people 
elevated to power because he resisted the payment of illegal duties 
at the Custom House, it lives where the effigy of that public 
spirited merchant dignifies the otherwise traditionless halls of your 
modern Exchange? 

Ask your Chamber of Commerce ! 

For many years the Leislerian party of New-York contended 
for principles, which every one now acknowledges to be the prin- 
ciples of the State. But so thoroughly did Toryism succeed in 
stamping them with obliquy at the time, that the voice of truth has 
been ever since unheard ; and with our archives full df irrefragable 
testimony to the noble spirit of Leisler's movement, and its entire 
sympathy with our present views of political right, the tale told by 
his foes has become part and parcel of our history, because Leisler's 
party was regarded as the New- York, and not the English party A 

And now let me pay a full-hearted tribute to that land where 
intelligence so faithfully ministers to patriotism, by collecting each 
shred of her peculiar story in town or hamlet, and hoarding up the 

* In the Corporation Manual, published yearly, the names of the officials under 
the first popular government of New-York, are to this day omitted. The word* 
[" usurpation of Leisler,"] in brackets, marking the only note of record of the most 
interesting political period in our provincial history. 

t See Chandler's Criminal Trials. 



52 



* 
* 



memories of each name and service of her sons who, even in the 
humblest sphere, have contributed aught to the glory of the com- 
monwealth. Had the progess truths for which Melbourne perished 
— had the eternal principles of right and wrong, whose distinctions 
Leisler died in upholding — had these been promulgated in New 
England, and sealed with the blood of a New England man, does 
any one doubt that the names of the brave martyrs would have 
stood at this moment foremost in American history as the joint 
embodiment, the first breathing types of principles taught eighty- 
six years afterwards in the Declaration of Independence'? 

Strange, most strange is it, that the story of these memorable 
worthies of New- York, so wholly, so peculiarly her own, should 
come up on the page of two leading New England historians, to 
prove that they are not worth remembering, or if worth remem- 
bering, that they acted under a Puritanic influence.* 

I 'respect, I reverence the zeal with which our intelligent 
neighbors preserve their own annals ; but it is full time that they 
should so write them, as not to overlay and obliterate ours. 

And the descendants of the Pilgrims here domesticated, are 
identified with our.-elv *s in maintaining the local associations and 
distinctive history of this State, unless they mean their children of 



* Hutchinson, and Bancroft. The German mode of writing history to illustrate 
a theory, a mode which Mr. Bancroft has followed with such signal ability, can do 
no harm in Europe, where they only re-write an old story from printed works 
which are in every public library. But in this country, where history as yet, and 
for some time to come, is to be prepared from original documents, a system of the 
kind can hardly be beneficial to the cause of truth? In adorning the new walls of 
the new British Parliament House their historic characters of the civil wars on either 
side, and the portraits of living men as directly opposed in political principle as 
Wentworth and Hampden, are alike preserved, as all forming a part of England's 
story. Should similar liberality of feeling ever grow up in this country, the faithful 
loyalty of Bayard, of Livingston, and other opponents of the democratic party of 
Leisler's time, will be honored even by those who disapprove their political prin- 
ciples ; and the military valor of New-York, as illustrated by the brave De Lanceys 
of a subsequent generation, receive its just meed, without any reference to the 
failing cause which they espoused, not in treason, as Arnold did, but in the blind 
and mistaken belief that it was the cause of " The Right," 



53 



a generation hence, shall yield to the New Englander of that day, 
the provincial obeisance which American colonists before the 
Revolution are said to have conceded to the Englishman as the 
highest type for social imiation. 

The future history of New-York, in which men of other lineage 
than theirs are taking their full share, will be no history of " the 
Puritan Anglo-Saxon." And her present and her past story, to 
the whole tissue and spirit of whi< h their children's children will be 
heritors, is no more to be merged in that of New England, than it 
is in that of Virginia. The same spirit which now teaches the 
father to exalt the land of his birth over all other regions of 
America, will prompt the child to drag down that exaltation, if 
based upon the depreciation of his native soil. For no New-Yorker, 
whatever may be his extraction, will consent that his willing 
tribute to Pilgrim worth shall be construed as a concession to 
Puritan superiority, or permit that his sympathetic reveience for 
the founders of a sister State, shall be perverted into an acknow- 
ledgment that any associations are paramount here which are 
borrowed at second-hand from another Commonwealth. 

There spreads the banner of New-York, and mark you well 
herensignia! The rising sun, the lifting eagle, the watch-word 
" Excelsior! " That sun shot his earliest beams from the bosom of 
our own waters ; and wherever the eagles of the great Republic 
have flown, ours has swept upon no feeble wing. Brothers of St. 
Nicholas, you at least will remember, that that bird of New-York 
which still bears " Excelsior" in his beak, was fledged on his own 
soil— he never began his soarings from Plymouth Rock. He 
dressed his plumage in our own lakes, and his pinions were nerved 
in the air of our own mountains. 



54 






NOTE. 

In the autumn of 1765, while several English men-of-war were lying in the 
harbor, and after the fort had been put in a complete state of defence by the Royal 
rnor, •• the stamps," conveyed in a merchant ship, arrived in the harbor of 
New-York. The king's stamp officer fearing the temper of the people, notwith- 
standing the means which had been adopted to overawe them, refused to receive 
Uw papers, much less to enter upon their distribution. Upon his refusal, thev were 
transferred, first to a ship of war, and subsequently to the governor's quarters 
in Fort George. But the people discovered the secret of their landing, and on the 
instant, hand-bills appeared on every corner, threatening all persons who received 
or delivered a stamp. On the 3 1st of October the merchants held a meeting, and 
resolved not to import goods from England. The next day the people hung the 
governor in effigy, in what is now the Park. On the same evening they repaired 
to the tort, and found the soldiers on the rampart ready to receive them. ' Nothing 
daunted, they marched to the gate, knocked and demanded admittance. This was 
Of course refused. They then collected in the Bowling Green, and there, within 
pistol shot of the fort, built a bonfire, upon which they immolated the effigies of 
the governor along with his chariot, in whiel they fixed the effigy. In the 3 next 
newspaper appeared an emphatic semi-official announcement, -that the governor 
" had not issued, and would not suffer to be issued, any of the stamps now in Fort 
George." The people were not satisfied ; they declared that the stamps should be 
delivered out of the fort or they would take them away by force. Finally, " after 
much negotiation." they were delivered to the mayor and common council, and 
deposited in the City Hall. 

We know that even at this early day, (says the Historian, speaking of this 
political movement of our citizens,) New- York was of considerable importance in 
the eyes o( the British ministry, and was looked up to in a commercial point of 
new by the neighboring colonies. There was a military force kept up there. It 
was the head quarters of His Majesty's American Army. Yet in 1766, it was 
boldly proclaimed under the very guns of the fort, that the British Parliament 
possessed not the shadow of a jurisdiction over America. Nor did an apprehension 
of the men-of-war in the harbor, prevent the New-Yorkers from dragging one 
distributor of stamps from his hiding-place on the opposite side of the East- River. 
They even compelled him to sign a resignation of his office before a public magis- 
trate. In the same record are accounts of the dashing movements of « the Liberty 
Boys," which Marims Wiixktt, Alexander McDoigall, and other patriots 
subsequently less distinguished than these men of mark, carried through with so 



55 

much spirit. While to show the temper of our people in all circles of society, we 
find a committee of one hundred leading citizens address the Lord Mayor and 
Common Council of London, declaring that " Americans will not be deceived by 
conciliatory measures" — " The minions of power in New-York may inform the 
administration that New-York is as one man in the cause of liberty." This address 
was signed by Isaac Low, chairman, John Jay, Francis Lewis, John Alsop, Philip 
Livingston, James Duane, E. Duyckrnan, William Seton, William W. Ludlow, 
Cornelius Clopper, Abraham Brinckerhoff', Henry Remsen, Robert Ray, Evert 
Bancker, Joseph Totten, Abraham P. Lott, David Beeckman, Isaac Roosevelt, 
Gabriel H. Ludlow, William Walton, Daniel Phoenix, Frederick Jay, Samuel 
Broome, John De Lancey, Augustus Van Home, Abraham Duryec, Samuel Ver- 
planck, Rudolphus Ritzeman, John Morton, Joseph Hallet, Robert Benson, Abra- 
ham Brasher, Leonard Lispenard, Nicholas Hoffman, P. V. B. Livingston, Thomas 
Marston, Lewis Pintard, John Imlay, Eleazer Miller, jr., John Broome, John B. 
Moore, Nicholas Bogert, John Anthony, Victor Bicker, William Goforth, Hercules 
Mulligan, Alexander McDougall, John Reade, Joseph Ball, George Janeway, John 
White, Gabriel W. Ludlow, John Lasher, Theophilus Anthony, Thomas Smith, 
Richard Yates, Oliver Templeton, Jacobus Van Landby, Jeremiah Piatt, Peter S. 
Curtenius, Thomas Randall, Lancaster Burling, Benjamin Kissam, Jacob Lefferts, 
Anthony Van Dam, Abraham Walton, Hamilton Young, Nicholas Rosevelt, Cor- 
nelius P Low, Francis Basset, James Beeckman, Thomas Ivers, Wiiliam Denning, 
John Berrien, Benjamin Helme, William W. Gilbert, Daniel Dunscomb, John 
Lamb, Richard Sharp, John Morin Scott, Jacob Van Voorhis, Comfort Sands, 
Edward Fleming, Peter Goelet, Gerret Kettletas, Thomas Buchanan, James Des- 
brosses, Petrus Byvanck, Lott Embren. Though all of these names are not found 
upon the Whig side after the Declaration of Independence, yet it must be remem- 
bered, that it was the community which they now represented, it was the merchants 
of New York who were the first to enter into the famous non-importation agreement, 
which, being followed by the other colonies, did more than any other movement to 
produce the repeal of the stamp act. And that success gave heart to the country 
for bolder movements. — See Dunlap, vol. L, and Appendix, vol. ii. 







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